I had a great uncle who was an island hopping G.I. during WW2. He spent the rest of his life drinking from sun up until he passed out later in the day. In and out of the V.A. Suffering from PTSD. He never got over the war; a waste of what might otherwise have been a good life. RIP uncle Jim.
The Nam did the same thing to my father, who was a door gunner in a Huey sled crew. Hey left the Nahm, but it never left him. T&Ps to ur uncle & all combat vets. ..they did the unspeakable so we wouldn't have too.
Same thing happening today from troops that were in Afghan and Iraq. And then the US withdraws and left 80 billion dollars in Afghanistan. Imagine how you would feel if you fought and were maimed and watched your brothers die, then your own government abandons the region and leaves billions of dollars of the best equipment with the enemy.
I had a favorite professor at college who was in the Philippines during the war. He sometimes mentioned it in passing, with few details. But during the 50th anniversary of the war's end an alumni magazine had a feature about him, he had landed as part of the first wave ashore and did not expect to survive. He did though, with a vengeance. He passed just a few years ago at 98. Thank you Professor Kaldis, as a historian I have tried to be like you.
Thanks for your comment. It has reminded me of a teacher from my schooldays. He was not a well man and often had bouts of shaking and sweating where he would have to leave the classroom. It wasn't until after leaving school that someone explained to me that he had been a prisoner of the Japanese in Burma and he still suffered from malaria from those days. (God bless you Mr Charles Boyer. I know that you now rest in peace and tranquility for eternity.)
My English professor was in the Bataan Death March. I wish I would have talked to him more about his experience, though I'm not sure how much he would have wanted to say.
Seriously both your channels and Mark Felton should take over “The History Channel” one month in order to inform audiences on what is real history. Thanks again for everything you do and wishing all a great summer + stay safe and healthy too.
A friend of mine in college was in the Pacific war. He saw some hard combat but never spoke of it. He was a wonderful man but I know he was as hard as a rock in a “situation” and had his part to play in our success. Thank you Tom for your service!
The US had to act and the Japanese had to surrender to the Americans. because... The Russians were amassing a huge invasion army to the north. The Japanese knew the Russians would take no prisoners.
@OnTheRiver66 - Atomic bombing Hiroshima civilians was a massive war crime killing women and children in cold blood is not war it is the work of cowards and totally un American, unpatriotic and not what Old Glory stands for and was a dis service to our brave fighting troops like Tom in the Pacific
@@majorrgeek No it wasn't. Knowing even more civilians would have died, had we NOT used the bomb. So, you would have rather seen more civilians, and our guys die?
As a Marine I was stationed on Okinawa for one year in 1981. Several times a month EOD would respond to various places on the island when unexploded ordinance was discovered. Most of these were found during construction of new buildings or roads. I went to many former battle grounds and memorials throughout the island. It was surreal.
My grandpa passed two years ago, at that time we found his discharge paperwork. He never talked about where he fought, all we knew was he was in the Pacific. Turns out he fought on Okinawa. This video shows me so much about why he was such a reserved man. Geezus he lived in hell. Miss you Grandpa 😘
I have the same story. I foung all his papers after my grandmother passed and we were cleaning out their house. He had passed a few years earlier. Never spoke of it. Always told not to ask about it. I found out why, he was a marine on okinawa and iwo jima and had a purple heart from being wounded from a kamikaze attack.
@@ClarkPesto Man they were a different sort, weren't they. Badass men with balls so big I'm amazed he could walk, and luck so long they should have played more lottery. I'm sure you miss your grandfather as much as I miss mine. Let us toast to their humbleness in life, and now in death their greatness of feats. 🤠🍻
@@p_campbell that they were. I do miss the old timer. He was quite the character. Went on to be a machinist and inventor, started his own manufacturing plant, still family owned by my uncle's. Cheers to the heroes of our worlds.
It made me rethink what it really was to suffer, some of the stuff he talks about going through like all the skin falling off his feet after 2 straight weeks of fighting and no time to remove his boots really made me appreciate my current situation
I have read his book several times. His description of the horrors of war leave me with the realization that we will never be able to give them all the honor they deserve.
My father was a designated corpsman with the 6th division and fought hand to hand with the enemy. He never spoke of the war with us growing up. My mother told me later that he had witnessed atrocities no human should ever have to see, and therefore felt no urge to speak of it.
A marine was hiding behind a wall when a suicide jap soldier let off a grenade. His whole arse landed on the knees of another soldier. He asked, "am I hit that bad???"
My father was a corpsman in Vietnam during the Tet. He never spoke of it, except with me on rare occasion. That's when one knows to STFU and listen. There was a very close call where he would have died while tending to a fallen Marine that could have led to his death, if another Marine hadn't turned around to "check on Doc". I'm alive by extension because of that Marine and probably the only one without familial connection to the Marines who celebrates the USMC birthday every year.
My Lebanese Uncle Louis Essid was killed in this battle. Thank You for putting this together. My Grandfather (his Brother) even at the age of 80 could never talk about it without Crying. He always wore some form of Black Attire the rest of his Life.
My Dad was a Navy Corpsman for the first week at Okinawa in April 1945. It was his 13th and last battle in WW2 before coming back to the states. He had been at sea 23 months, crossed the equator 10 times on 3 different ships, and saw everything. A Golden Shellback. Great video Dark Docs.
My dad was damaged in Okinawa and my uncle was KIA in europe, I was a Corpsman in Vietnam and lost a lung , upon returning to the states at LAX a pretty little hippie girl with a flower in her hand walked up to me, smiled, spit in my face and called me a baby killer. I'm glad this didn't happen to the greatest generation.
Dr. Eugene B Sledge was my Biology professor at the University of Montevallo for 4 semesters. He is truly an undeclared WW2 hero. His true life autobiography ""WITH THE OLD BREED"" is NYT best seller and used to be required reading in Marine Corp Boot Camp. This book Eugene B Sledge I recommend if one wants to know what the U.S. Military went through in the South Pacific. PLEASE DO A DOCUMENTARY ON THIS HERO!
Have read With The Old Breed 3 or 4 times. It’s considered the best account of the Marines in the Pacific. Was reading it at the bar of my local pub, a few years ago. A chap stood next to me and got a beer. It was Australian actor Gary Sweet, who played Gunny Elmo Hanney in The Pacific series. Like a good fellow, left him alone to enjoy his beer.
My uncle Raymond Schmid fought with the 5th Marines alongside E.B. Sledge on Peleliu. Very badly wounded there, he died 20 years later of complications from his wounds, happily married with four children to a wartime Navy nurse. God bless all the men (my Dad, my uncles, so many more) and women on the home front who sacrificed so much for us in WWII.
My Father-in-law made seven invasions in the Pacific, including Tarawa, and Saipan. He was in the first landing craft to land on Saipan, an hour before the next ones.
I served on Okinawa for almost all of 1970 as a US Marine. We spent some time training up on the north end of Okinawa and I remember leading a squad exercise down a small ravine hemmed in by dense undergrowth and trees and small caves all over the place. I remember thinking that only 25 years before we would have had to fight our way down that ravine. One weekend on liberty a few of us paid for a ride on an Okinawan ferry out to Ie Shima island and we saw the memorial for Ernie Pyle, the war correspondent. We then took a steep trail up the back side of the huge rock formation mentioned in the video. I still have some pictures that we took from the top as you could pretty much see the whole island from up there. Really enjoyed this video and just thank God that I was born in 1950 instead of 1925.
I was on Okinawa as a dependent from 1970-72. My dad was in SF at camp Hardy. We lived in Ishikawa for about a year or so and then moved to Sukiran. Graduated from Kubasaki HS.
I was in the USAF at Naha in 1969-70. I spent time on Ie Shima and remember the Ernie Pyle monument. We had a short runway on the island. You could find remnants of a Japanese airfield amid the low growing brush. I visited a number of sites near Naha Air Base, like Suicide Cliff and the memorial to Gen Buckner. He was killed by an artillery shell. I wish I had known more about the history of the battle when I was there.
@@hamiltonconway6966 Most of our few hours of free time as Marines while on Okinawa involved a beach and alcohol, Naha and alcohol, the "Topper Club" and alcohol, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
I visited that same island in 2018 for some snorkeling together with a native Okinawan and two ladies from Tokyo. Despite being a very hot day, we enjoyed the snorkeling. Then I came across the memorial to Ernie Pyle that indicated to me at least that this was sacred ground akin to Gettysburg. Men had fought and died for these jagged coral rocks. It is not lost on me the bravery of the American soldiers so that later generations like us, of both Americans and Japanese, can leisurely swim about on holiday.
After years of silence about his experience as a signal man in the Pacific, my dad handed me E.B. Sledge's book. It profoundly changed my ideas about my dad, his generation, and the freedom they fought for.
As a teenager in the 60s, my Dad who was in the Navy during WW2 and Pearl Harbor and then his ship being torpedoed twice showed signs of PTSD. I believe he was fighting it internally (similarly to my own experience after Vietnam) along with many of the WW2 guys. It was termed "shell shock" and no VA benefits back then. Same with my Uncle Jim who enlisted at 40 years old and assigned to combat engineering in the Army. He received the French Cross de Guere and it was pinned on him by Charles De Gaul.
My late father-in-law was wounded at Okinawa. After he was wounded (three times) he carried another soldier to an aid station. He was awarded the Bronze Star.
Similar story to my grandpa's brother. He was in Korea when the Chinese attacked. He carried a wound man a mile to an aid station. Then the doc there told him he couldn't go back to the line. He had been shot thru the arm and hadn't noticed. Went home and had problems with that arm the rest of his life. Became a lumberjack. Quiet man, didn't talk about much.
Thank your dad and grandfather for their service. I'm sorry for all they suffered, but I appreciate them. My son did 3 tours in Iraq and doesn't talk about it. He has gone thru ptsd, too. He and his brothers got hurt numerous times. He has saved his brothers, as some told, at his wedding reception. I had no idea. He and one of his brothers, both got a purple heart. They all have gone days without food and water and helped out the marines alot, that were pinned down. I appreciate all troops, soldiers, marines, all of our divisions of military men. Past and present! All who died or are still here, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE AND SACRIFICES!! ❤❤ God bless all of you and your families!!!
I once wrote an article for a history magazine about the Allied generals who were lost in WWII. Here are some of the facts regarding Lieutenant General Buckner that I learned in my research. He was the only Army officer to command US Marines in combat during the war. There is a photo of Buckner standing with some of his staff just before the artillery shell hit. There was only the one shot fired. It hit a rock nearby and a splinter of the rock, not shell, pierced his side and nicked his heart. Ironically, he was the only one hit and at the time was standing furthest away from the rock than anyone else with him. He was also looking through his binoculars at that moment, so his arms were raised. It is thought that had his arms been down at his side, he would have suffered a very nasty arm wound, but nothing more serious. He initially survived, but died on the operating table a short time later.
You'd be very interested in the book "The One Thousand Mile War" - There's a great deal of depth and color about General Buckner. After reading that book, you can't help but love the man.
Buckner was one of four US Lieutenant Generals KIA during the war, along with Lt. Gens Leslie McNair, Frank Maxwell Andrews, and Millard Harmon. Buckner and McNair were both posthumously promoted to the rank of General (4 stars) in 1954.
The Japanese strategy at Okinawa was to inflict so many casualties on the USMC that it would deter the US from invading Japan because the tenacity shown would mean that the USMC would take 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 casualties to conquer mainland Japan. Their strategy worked but backfired and did not give them the desired results. Truman, faced with 4 times the number of casualties we had already suffered in the entire war easily decided on the alternative; the atomic bombs, in order to not incur those crazy high casualties.
After the war, Truman was asked why he had the Bomb dropped. His answer? "What would I have told the mothers of another MILLION dead soldiers, had we NOT used the bomb...That I could have ended the war immediately, but chose not to?"
YOUR mostly CORRECT, except, the " MARINES " Part. The U.S. Army was the Main Invasion Force. the Marines, Bless there HEART, didn't Have anywhere NEAR 500,000 Men under Arms. much less a Million. I am sure that Australia & New Zealand were going to do there Part in the Invasion as they could also. & had it drawn OUT YOU can BET the British would have sent troops also. BUT it would have been a VERY BLOODY MESS !
Okinawa was a brutal combat theater. Living there for four years and visiting the battle locations discussed in this video definitely grew my respect and admiration for the soldiers and sailors who fought and died there.
The losses were enormous for the Americans, over 70,000 of them became casualties including 12,520 dead. The battle stands as the only battle in the Pacific War were both commanders were killed on both sides. The Japanese losses were catastrophic with almost all of them killed (around 100,000) with only several thousand mostly wounded taken prisoners. The Civilians of Okinawa also suffered dearly with 150,000 of them killed. The battle stands as the bloodiest battle in the Pacific War
To put the civilian number in perspective, local officials estimated the pre war population to be around 300,000. Other sources estimate losses closer to 25%. Either way, it's horrific. Many of the civilian loses are due to the population believing the propaganda of how the US would treat them.
My father was wounded on Bougainville, and back in the US by '45, though he spent months in an Army hospital in San francisco. He was reported KIA in the local papers, but his mother never believed he was dead. My mom recounted how she was sitting on the porch with grandma, shelling peas, when he came walking up the driveway, in DeArmanville, Alabama, in his dress uniform, with a great big grin on his face. They hadn't seen him for three years.
I was born on Okinawa in 1951 and lived there 14 years. The signs of the battle were everywhere, but the most striking thing was when I went back in 1999 and got to tour some of the areas I grew up in. At first I had a rough time reconciling my memories what I was seeing. Then I understood. There were Trees! When I was there the jungle grasses were taller than the trees that were trying to grow back.
I lived on Okinawa 1957-59. I remember finding a grenade . A man came a took from me saying he would give me a million dollars.Never got my million . There was weapons all over that island left over from war.
It remains a mystery to me why these days are all but forgotten in our modern world. This stuff should be properly taught to us all, so it is never forgotten and never repeated
Human beings as a whole are incapable of learning from history. An individual can learn from studying the past in order to avoid certain future blunders, but collectively we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
My Dad went into the Marines at 17 in 43 and Island Hopped to Okinawa. On Okinawa he was severely injured and spent the next year in traction in a Naval Hospital. He was let out and sent home and every 6 months would go back to the Hospital or VA to go into traction and get his back straighten out. He had massive scars from his left shoulder to right hip and all down his legs. He also always had jungle rot in his feet. He came home married and they had my sis in 49, my bro in 52, and me in 57. Both my Dad and Mom are dead due to age.
Thanks for sharing. Those men had a real grit and represented more than the fight. What a tough thing, war. I'm glad you are alive, that your Dad made it out. I appreciate him and your family.
I remember the end of the Okinawa episode of The Pacific and how brutal it was. Our narrator mentioning how the Marines were losing their humanity and sanity was spot-on.
Those Marines absolutely did not lose their 'humanity.' Those Marines, and GI's fought for those lost at Pearl Harbor, all the oppressed among the Pacific Islands, for those murdered along the Bataan Death March, and absolutely mostly they fought for their fellow soldiers. The most important thing for these guys were to make sure that it could not be said of them that their inaction, or incorrect action led to the death of a fellow soldier. I suppose your mostly just good at parroting S--T like that, without understanding S--T about what your saying..
I served in Nam. My greatest respects for the brave men and women who challenged the japanese, took their best shots and still won. May you live forever in the halls of heroes.
I have the utmost respect for you also. You went through hell in Nam. My father and uncle were in Nam . My father committed suicide. My uncle was 101st airborne and fought at hamburger hill. He barely told me a few things he experienced before I left for the Marine Corps. He still has issues and won't talk about it.
@Jesus Gutierrez No I didn't. I was in 3 and 4 corp mostly. That's low lands, rice fields, and jungle. I was, mostly, at fire bases forward lookout bases.
During the fighting depicted in the movie "Hacksaw Ridge", my Father's regiment was fighting to clear the eastern flank of the ridge a few hundred yards away. My Father never spoke about the war or the Bronze Star he was awarded. When he was very old and I asked him to tell me everything so his sacrifice would not be forgotten in our family. I was surprised when he opened up, and all the names of places he remembered, Cactus Ridge, Kakazu Ridge, Shuri Castle, Conicle Peak, Love hill, Sugar Loaf, Dick Hill, and others.
I remember visiting Shuri Castle one day when I served there as a Marine in 1970. We were on liberty and I remember us walking along a long, wide wall of the castle that evening. There was a small family owned zoo at the base of part of the wall and I remember they had wire over the top of the monkey cage so the monkeys could not climb up the castle wall, which was the back wall of their enclosure. Surely a far cry from what those Marines went thru there in 1945. Semper Fi.
My step father told me about the fight for Shuri Castle, where he was wounded by mortar fire. They had to teach him how to walk again, took him a year to recover. He carried shrapnel with him the rest of his life
@@robertslusser6753Pretty sure the army 77th division was facing the Shuri castle when it fell . My father was a member of the 305th ID there. Later he was hit taking the last hill on that island.
I dont know what kind of patriotism level some people are looking for,these people sacrificed their very lives so that we can continue to live in freedom and harmony, we must always be thankful to this selfless great generation .
Desmond Doss was a real life, genuine badass hero. Your saying he saved "dozens" doesn't do him justice, although technically accurate. He saved 75 men. You don't get much more badass than that. A1C Pitsenbarger saved 60 in Vietnam at one battle. These are special men, the Medics, Corpsmen and SAR's, a different breed. Thank God we have them.
My uncle was a medic, 8th. Army, in Italy. They may not have carried guns but they were still at the very front, going out under fire with only the hope that the enemy would respect their Red Cross armband as their only protection - although the barbaric Japanese would never have respected that. There is a statue 20 miles (South Shields) away to John Simpson Kirkpatrick who at Gallipoli 1916 was one of 3 medics that famously used donkeys to get the wounded away over rough terrain at that theatre of war, unfortunately killed there.
My father was in the Marines in WW2. He was at Guadalcanal, Bouganville, Peleliu, and Okinawa. For him, the worst was Peleliu. Just like Tarawa, the Higgens boats were stuck on the reef forcing them to wade ashore under fire. Peleliu was supposed to take 3 days, but instead it was closer to 3 months. 1st Marines took 70% casualties and was considered wiped out. He said the way they got through it was deciding they were already dead. He was heading for a staging area for the invasion of Japan when the news of the atomic bombs arrived, which is why I'm here to write this.
My great uncle served in the US Army during WW2 as an infantryman, but he was deployed to the Pacific to operate under MacArthur. He served on the frontlines, fought directly against Japanese soldiers, and managed to get through his tour unscathed, but he knew, even back then, that his experience was an extremely rare exception to the norm, especially how, at least as far as he could tell, he never hit or killed any Japanese despite taking shots at them. He was no pacifist by any stretch, but he absolutely relished the times he did not have to do any fighting. He was grateful that he never killed anyone (again, as far as he knew). His squad was in quite a few close-range shootouts, but they never found blood or bodies of Japanese soldiers where they fought, though they did find spent ammo or abandoned weapons, the latter becoming more common towards the end of his tour. They suspected that the bulk of their fights were more akin to harassment, especially the later fights, given that Japanese weapon quality was plummeting by then (not much point in keeping a weapon you can't fix later). As far as his squad was concerned, they would not speak of their miraculous experience until after the war, out of fear of jinxing it and thus ending the miracle prematurely. No one in his squad received any decorations beyond a few Purple Hearts (to reiterate, he came out physically unharmed), nor did they achieve anything particularly notable, at least not in a fighting sense, but to them, surviving mostly intact was enough of a commendation for them.
That's honestly funny and strange as Hell that he and his squad had that happen to them. Makes you wonder if that whole "don't jinx it" thing has any weight.
MY HUSBAND ONLY ONCE BROKE DOWN AND SOBBED ABOUT HIS TWO COMBAT TOURS IN VIETNAM…..1967-1969, INCLUDING TET OFFENSIVE……WHICH WAS AFTER HIS WORKD WAR TWO FATHER’s PASSING IN 2019. HE HAD BEEN SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN HIS LUMBAR SPINE (TWO MONTHS IN TRACTION) BY A VIET CONG MORTAR BLAST JULY 1968. AFTER A TERRIBLE CAR WRECK IN NOVEMBER 1989 INVOLVING TWO RUTTING DEER THAT CRUSHED HIS SPINE & RE-INJURED HIS WOUNDS, SINKING HIM INTO AN ALMOST COMATOSE STATE OF DEPRESSION FOR THREE YEARS, HE WAS AWARDED 100% DISABILITY IN 1991. HOW HE PREPARED ALL THE NORTHERN DEFENSES OF HIS TASK FORCE UNIT AT DUC PHO BEGINNING HIS ARRIVAL LATE NOVEMBER 1967 UNTIL THE SECOND NIGHT OF TET (THEY WERE HEAVILY MORTARED & HALF THE HUEYS WERE DESTROYED ON THE GROUND THE FIRST NIGHT). THEY WERE ATTACKED THE SECOND NIGHT BY COMMUNIST SOLDIERS THAT HE SAID “LOOKED LIKE A TIDAL WAVE OF HOWLING MONSTERS ALL COMING RIGHT AT MY CENTER POINT MACHINE GUN BUNKER”. HE ORDERED HIS MACHINE GUNS (EIGHT 50 CAL & THE SAME IN M-60s) NOT FIRE & HE HAD ORDERED ALL HIS SOLDIERS THAT THEY WERE EACH STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO USE THEIR RIFLES ON AUTOMATIC BECAUSE OF JAMMING……ONLY THEN THE MACHINE GUNS DID OPEN FIRE THE COMMUNISTS BEGAN TO “PILE UP” IN HIS LINES OF CONCERTINA WIRE “V” FORMATIONS ……. SO WHEN THE MACHINE GUNS STARTED, THEY ENEMY FELL ON TOP OF EACH OTHER IN HUGE NUMBERS, AND THE MANY SOLDIERS MY HUSBAND HAD LYING UNDER SAND BAGGED CULVERTS SHOT THOSE WHO WERE “UNDER” THE DEAD BODIES. AND THEN, WHEN THEY BEGAN TO SLOW DOWN, HE CALLED IN FOR “PRE-PLOTTED” AIR BURST ARTILLERY. THE ATTACK BEGAN AROUND I:30 AM & WAS OVER BEFORE 6:AM!!! SOME OF HIS NEWEST SOLDIERS BECAME EXCITED & RAN OUT INTO THE KILLING ZONE……AND SOME GOT SICK & THREW UP BECAUSE THE DEATH WAS 100% & WAS ESTIMATED AT MORE THAN 450 ENEMY SOLDIERS…..BUT MOST WERE JUST PIECES OF HUMAN BODIES…..AND AN OCEAN FLOOD OF BLOOD 🩸. LATER THAT MORNING, BULL DOZERS WERE BROUGHT OUT THAT DUG DEEP DITCHES AND THE “SOUP & SLIME” WAS PUSHED INTO THEM. THE REALITY OF THE DEFENSE WAS SO TERRIBLE THAT OUT OF 450+ DEAD, ONLY 32 ENEMY RIFLES WERE SALVAGED AND RE-USED BY MY HUSBAND & SOME OF HIS SOLDIERS!!! (THEY THREW THEIR OWN “PLASTIC TOY” M-16s UNDER TRUCK WHEELS & CLAIMED THEM AS “COMBAT LOSS”!!! JUST AS EVERYBODY BEGAN CELEBRATING, MY HUSBAND WAS TOLD THAT NO AMERICANS HAD BEEN WOUNDED BUT ONE SOLDIER HAD BEEN KILLED. MY HUSBAND HAD SPECIFICALLY TOLD THAT YOUNG BOY TO STAY INSIDE HIS BUNKER BUT HE DISOBEYED AND CRAWLED ONTOP OF A BUNKER THAT DID NOT HAVE A COVER OVER THE GUN NEST, SO IT WAS NOT TO BE USED. THAT YOUNG SOLDIER WAS A 5,000 FUEL TRUCK DRIVER WHO HAD CONVOYED NUMEROUS TIMEs & HAD BEEN REPEATEDLY SHOT AT. AND - HE WAS GOING TO FLY OUT TO THE BIG AIR BASE AT CAN RANH BAY THE NEXT MORNING AT 8:AM…..AND CATCH A “FREEDOM BIRD” TO GO HOME. WHEN HIS BODY WAS FOUND, HE HAD LARGE WOUNDS ON HIS BACK & HIS FACE WAS GREY FROM LOSS OF BLOOD. THE AIR BURSTS MY HUSBAND CALLED IN THAT SAVED OVER 200 SOLDIERS THAT NIGHT AT DUC PHO HAD KILLED HIM. YEARS LATER, AFTER WE WERE MARRIED AND HE WAS STUDYING FOR HIS MASTERS IN THEOLOGY AT WHEATON COLLEGE (BILLY GRAHAM’s ALMA MATER), ONE OF THE OTHER LIEUTENANTS WHO WAS WITH MY HUSBAND THAT NIGHT & LIVED IN CHICAGO, TOLD ME WHEN MY HUSBAND SAW THE DEAD SOLDIER, HE WALKED OFF BEHIND A BARRIERS SURROUNDING THE FUEL STORAGE AREA, AND CRIED BITTER TEARS OVER THAT YOUNG SOLDIER’s DEATH. AND WHEN HE FOUND OUT HE WAS BEING RECOMMENDED FOR THE SILVER STAR, HE WENT WILD WITH RAGE & RIPPED EVERYTHING UP! BUT DURING HIS SECOND TOUR (HE WENT BACK WHEN HIS COLONEL TOLD HIM THERE WERE FORTY NEW SOLDIERS ON THE WAY FROM AMERICA & DID NOT HAVE AN EXPERIENCED OFFICER TO LEAD THEM) HE WAS SEVERELY WOUNDED CHASING ONE FRIGHTENED SOLDIER “BACK” ONTO HIS MACHINE GUN WHILE THEY WERE BEING MORTARED, (TWO MONTHS IN TRACTION)…….AND THEN ASSIGNED COMPANY COMMANDER OF A VIETNAMESE MILITIA UNIT FOR HIS LAST THREE MONTHS…..AND WAS JUMPED BY TWO VIET CONG SOLDIERS, KNOCKING HIS RIFLE OUT OF HIS HANDS, AND TRYING TO CAPTURE “THE AMERICAN ADVISOR” ON HIS VERY LAST NIGHT PATROL…..KILLING ONE WITH HIS KNIFE & SNAPPING THE OTHER ONE’s NECK (BUT ONLY AFTER RIPPING HIS EYES OUT)! SUCH IT IS WHEN A 19 YR OLD WHO COULD NOT BAIT A FISH HOOK WITHOUT GETTING SICK, IS DRAFTED, TRAINED TO KILL……AND DISCOVERS A MONSTER LIVING INSIDE OF HIM. AND BILLYBONER & MURDER INC KILLERY CLIT……LABEL HIM & 3.7 MILLION OTHER AMERICANS …… A DRUG ADDICTED, BABY KILLING, TICKING TIME BOMB “LOSER”. PLEASE, AMERICA 🇺🇸, VOTE FOR PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP & VICE PRESIDENT VANCE!!! ❤❤❤🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 🙏 🙏🙏 ✝️✝️✝️ 🤰🤰🤱🤱👨🍼👨🍼
We knew my grandfather served in the Pacific in the Navy. It wasn’t until I was old enough to tell him I was thinking of serving when I got old enough that he told me. He had been on ammunition ships. He had 3 shot out from under him. Believed to be the sole survivor of one, he crawled around on a scrap of an island for a month before rescued.
Great video! And appropriate video clips for the historical narrative. The fighting efforts of the US Army in the Pacific is often overlooked. The Marines fought valiantly and certainly added to their illustrious history. But soldiers were there in the Pacific Theatre from Day 1. My Father-In-Law was a Gunners Mate on the USS Intrepid. He earned 5 Battle Stars for his service. Received a Commendation for his efforts in helping shoot down numerous Kamikazes. As one Marine Officer said about the battle, “Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue” among the Soldiers & Marines there. Amen. What a Great Generation!
One mistake the narration makes is when it states that the bombing of mainland Japan was dependent on the invasion of Okinawa. Not so-- the strategic bombing of Japan was already underway, and had been for months, from the Marianas. Perhaps what was meant was a _tactical_ air campaign in preparation for the invasion of the mainland, but it's potentially confusing.
My grandfather was in 5th Marines on Okinawa during that time. It's a wonder he made it back. In the 90s when I was stationed over there I went a visited some of the same areas that he crawled across so many years before. It was surreal. God bless them all
My English father was in a ship, heading for Japan. They were told that the attrition rate would be 98%. As they came closer, the ship slowed. Then they heard that the Internationally developed atomic bomb had been dropped and the war was over. If the bombs were not dropped, none of my brothers and sisters, our children and grandchildren would have occurred.
In the film footage there's a brief shot of a troop transport. The PA-28.I had to stop and stare at it. My father was on that ship when that photo was taken. He served on that ship from Africa, Sicily, Normandy and then to the Pacific campaign. He was a pharmacist mate. The ship was the Charles Carroll. He died on June 6th 1975. Through my father in-law a man who served through WWII, Korea and Vietnam he was able to give my dad a full military burial at sea. It was done off the coast of Normandy. We went in 2008 to walk the beaches and visit the cemetery and say goodbye to dad.That's all I can say.
I read "With The Old Breed" and it was by far one of the best first hand accounts of war. Robert Leckie's " A Helmet For My Pillow" was also fantastic!
The Marines were only half of the Tenth Army. My dad was in the Army side in the Okinawa Battle as a Signal Corp telephone linesman. The Army troops were feeling it too. Okinawa convinced the Brass that the Bomb instead of Invasion was the way to go.
I'd have to agree, contrary to what more than one Dilbert in this comments section boldly asserts (in their views, we dropped em simply bcz Americans r by nature bloodthirsty). Needless to say, i gave a stout rebuttal to their not_quite_ready_for_primetime perspective.
My Father was in the 96th Army Division. Okinawa was going to serve as the base for the Japan mainland invasion. It is doubtful he would have survived that invasion. If the Bomb had not been dropped, me and my siblings probably wouldn't exist.
Who else looks forward to getting a notification from dar docs He's always going over stuff in history that I'm interested in & hes thorough with all his research and presentation!
There are inaccuracies in many of his videos. In this one he claimed that after Okinawa fell the US could finally bomb Tokyo with B-29's... but B-29's had been bombing Tokyo from Saipan for nearly a year before Okinawa was taken. That's just an example, and why his videos are amateurish.
If it was this bad taking Okinawa, imagine what it would have been like taking the mainland the same way. The carnage of two nuclear bombs, as horrific as it was, doesn't even come close to the slaughterhouse on both sides that would have been an invasion.
My dad and all my uncles served in the Pacific. They had a lot of stories for us kids about basic and hijinks in Honolulu. But they never talked about anything west of Hawaii. To a man they all agreed the bombs were the only way. The Japanese were so fanatic that taking Japan would have been total bloodbath.
@@kmbbmj5857 Every last man I heard in my childhood talking about his experiences in the Pacific theatre was adamant about one thing: NEVER trust the Japanese. Never. The same was told to me by a fellow veteran many years later who had became a military historian.
If the bombs were not readied in time or failed to work plan B was the massive use of chemical weapons on the Japanese mainland. Special test sites were built at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah replicating Japanese defensive positions encountered during the island hopping campaign. Goats and sheep were tethered inside the defensive positions and bombarded with various war gasses available at the time. Like the A-bombs, poisonous gas was deemed a better alternative than US casualties which were expected to number over 1 million.
Great men, irrefutably, but the greatest? That's debatable. What about the Revolutionary War? They founded the republic against the empire upon which the sun did not set.
Thanks. Best short documentary I've seen on Okinawa. After being g stationed there for 3 years (1970-73) and visiting the historic sights, the memories flooded back.
Dang. My grandad played for the Philadelphia A's and then went and fought in the Pacific Theater. When he got back he played for the Boston Red Sox with Ted Williams and other vets. Real men.
I served 2 years on "the Rock" while in the Air Force , what almost no historian ever mentions or fails to realize is that Okinawa wasn't part of Japan until a few decades before the Battle of Okinawa. They had their own language and the civilian population was treated very poorly, even brutally at the end, by the Imperial forces. Many of the Okinawans were glad that the Marines were victorious and very thankful for their remarkably different treatment after the war. I have never met more gracious hosts.
It was the Army that dominated Okinawa. Not the Marines. The Marines only had 88,000 men on the island whereas the Army had 130,000 men doing the brunt of the fighting. As we all know, the Marines were not very capable to do this type of warfare.
@@mochatech121What are you talking about? The marines relieved the army after they got chewed up in the south. Marines took over while the army re grouped, then joined the fight again. Read some books.
@@JJ-wk5wh You do realize that you are talking about another subject... I never mentioned anything about " relieving". I was mentioning " dominate". I read plenty of history about WW2... Not the many storybooks of WW2. Read my previous comment... That is what I was talking about.
My Dad was in the USMC there with the native Okinawans, they came to him and thrust their youngster toward his arms and said: '"Take to America!" Obviously he explained that was impossible. Dad was the "Old Man" at the age of 27. While on a gentler setting near shore an Okinawan was searching for fish. My Dad and the boys got some dynamite and threw it in the water. A tuna turned belly up; the man saw it and swam to it wrapping his arms around the tail. But then the tuna was only stunned and lumbered in the water with the man being dragged over the coral. He would not let go and the fish finally tired. As the man stood up in the shallow water, the smile on him showed his pride of the catch as blood dripped down his chest from the coral. Dad made it through all without taking a bullet.
My Dad served on a ship in the North Atlantic in the last years of the war. After seeing this fine but heartbreaking video of the carnage our brave gallant heroic strong troops faced in taking Okinawa, I'm glad to be alive. If he'd been deployed to the Pacific, I might not be here. Thank you again, those who served in WWII.
You videos and narratives are more than professional. They are of the best information and images I've ever seen over the years of learning more about the war that my father fought in as a US Army medic in the Pacific. Keep up the excellent work.
@@chrislee176 In my opinion, "The Greatest Generation" does not refer, simply, to "brave soldiers". Of course brave men were on all sides, but that is not the meaning of the phrase. The way I take the phrase is more specific to those free men and women who voluntarily sacrificed their own lives and freedoms to defeat the Totalitarian Fascist regimes of the Japanese, Germans, and Italians. The meaning, to me, is a refection of Western Ideals in the common soldier, and all the families and the rest of society which supported them. It was a learned but also inherent understanding of a Western tradition going back to the Hellenic Greeks. So no, I would not include the hive like, Eastern-based mindset of even the bravest of our Axis enemies in the phrase. They are not "Great"... enemies of the Western Tradition cannot be "Great" in my eyes. Brave, yes. Strong and determined, yes. But they were indoctrinated in the worst of humanities ideals, and that can never be "great" to me.
@@proto57 I take your point; neither bravery, nor soldiering, is, per se, great. I also concur that hive-like thinking is anathema to the best of the Western Tradition -and/though increasingly I realise that this is true also of the best of any tradition. Limiting the kudos to the West presupposes that individuals there were less hive-minded than elsewhere. Perhaps this is statistically so, though witnessing how indoctrinated masses have acted regarding covid, NATO/US/Ukraine/Russian from 2014 to the present, the welfare/warfare States, the Unnecessary & Forever Wars, fiat currencies imposed with legal-tender laws, the bloating of the State, and the list only grows more egregious -it seems the Tradition too deeply lacks soul and a moral compass to merit much singling out for its nobility. Meanwhile, there are -and yes, perhaps fewer as a percentage population- beacons of good independent moral thought and action elsewhere too. Was it really so different in times past? It seems to me that perhaps there was no Great Generation, but rare Great Individuals scattered across the Earth.
I'm grateful to them too, but I'm not so sure that I'd call them "the greatest." Greater than any that have come since, for sure. Great for having weathered the great depression, then come out victorious in WWll, absolutely. But let's not forget that this generation failed to finish the race, took their hands off the plow, and in their slackness and complacency following WWll, failed in raising their children well, the baby boomers, who ushered in the downfall of western society, starting in the 60s. I still give them a lot of credit overall, but this blight on their record is massive.
My father was a 19-year-old Marine in the First Marine Division unloading supplies at the beach, when he witnessed the Kamikazes attacking the US naval ships offshore. His Sgt. yelled at him and his buddies to stop gawking and get back to work. Look up at the blood bath of the Sugar Loaf at Okinawa. A small hump of a hill, only a 100 yards wide, that cost the Marines dearly trying over and over to take it. Adjacent hills enfladed the Marines. US naval guns and artillery couldn't put a dent in them. This is why the Nuclear bombs were necessary to end the war. The Japanese WANTED the US to invade their islands. They WANTED the opportunity to fight face to face. The Japanese leaders were willing to sacrifice every single Japanese man, woman, and child to fight a Götterdämmerung battle. If the Marines and Army troops where becoming callous and beastly at Okinawa, imagine the trauma they would suffer the rest of their lives shooting down old men, women and children charging them with bamboo spears and IED bombs. Okinawa really chilled the blood and spines of the US commanders imaging how many time worse it would be to invade Japan. The a-Bombs ironically saved more Japanese lives than lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If the war dragged on through 1946-47, millions of Japanese would have starved to death or die from disease, as well as from combat. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Allied POW's would have perished, along the local natives in the territories the Japanese still held in China, Borneo, Hong Kong, Burma, Java, Singapore, and other islands.
The Russians also attacked from the North at the same time, ancestral enemies, the Japanese did not want to be taken over by Russia. The Russian timetable was something like 30 days after the defeat of Germany, they agreed to attack Japan. Right on the button as it turned out they invaded through Manchuria with lots of tanks and troops. A surprise attack it seems.
@@garywheeler7039 The A-bombs were a not-so-subtle message to stalin as well. Bruh, we have the power, we have the might, AND the willingness to use it.
Wow, this is the first time I have heard any historian mentioning the Army in any of the pacific battles other than in short passing. Most people think only the Marines were there? One of my biggest problems with the Japanese thinking was they knew they had lost the war yet they thought they could work out a face-saving peace treaty. Instead, they wasted all those young men who were needed in the rebuilding of Japan. Stupid leadership to the max!!
There were considerably more US Army personnel than Marines in the Pacific theater. Still, it took the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen to win the day!
WHAT Are you serious? The US Army was the main ground and airpower fighting force in the Pacific theater during WW2. U.S. involvement in WWII grew to be about 16,000,000 military personnel by the war's end. Approximately 11,200,000 in the Army, and only 660,000 in the Marine Corps. The US Army did the vast majority of land fighting and had the greatest numbers of victories in the Pacific with 22 divisions. The Marines only had six divisions in the Pacific and played a very limited role. . In the African and European theaters, the Marines had only 6,000 men. I can not believe that you don't know this very common fact. I never heard anyone not knowing this.
@@mochatech121 nice copy and paste from Wikipedia lol... Marines were the first to fight then the army came in to relieve them throughout the battles .
The Japanese thought that if they made Okinawa costly enough to the Americans, they would be willing to end the war with a treaty as opposed to physically invading the main Japanese islands. Based on casualties from Okinawa, it was estimates that taking the main islands would have dragged out the war for another few years at the cost of 1 million American lives, and up to 100 million Japanese lives, many of them civilians. This estimate greatly influenced our decision to use the atomic bombs. I spent 20 years in the USMC (1986-2006) as an Infantry officer., with 3 combat tours including 2 in Iraq. We never had to go through the hell on earth that our WW2 veterans did. God bless them!
After the battle of Okinawa, the casualty estimates for Operation Coronet (the 1st phase of 'Downfall', the invasion of Kyushu) were adjusted to expect nearly 300K Allied troops and almost 1 million Japanese killed or wounded . Honshu would be worse. Small wonder President Truman opted for nukes.
Its so easy for a "normal" Man to become a Monster. Under the right( wrong) circumstances, anyone can cross to the "Dark Side". And War is One of those Circumstances.
My late father was wounded on Iwo Jima, but not bad enough to go home. He was in the Army Air Corp and was part of the last battle as the Japanese attacked the airbase. He survived to come home and years later, gave me my life. God bless those Marines who had survived Iwo Jima , only to have to go to Okinawa. One can only imagine how terrible the battle to take Japan would have been..
My father was on the invasion planning team. They expected millions of civilians to commit suicide, just like on Iwo and Okinawa. They saved millions by dropping the bomb.
It's always a good day when Dark Docs (along the other channels). Uploads a new video. Not to disrespect the suffering of the civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Operation Downfall would have been far worse.
If you've never experienced the rain and jungle on Okinawa, it's hard to understand the battle and Eugene Sledge's book. Suicide cliffs are by far the most disconcerting place I have ever been.
After Okinawa, it was insane to think we might be able to conquer mainland Japan. The A-Bombs were bad but Japan is in a vastly better condition now than if they had fought to the last man, woman and child.
I had an uncle who fought on Iwo Jima, and he told us back in the very early '70's that the Marines he fought with would periodically have to be pulled from the fight because "they started liking to kill". Those are true stories.
My grandfather was removed from front line duty after the battle for sugarloaf Hill. Due to combat fatigue. I still have his bayonet with "Okinawa" carved into the handle.
@@williampotter3369 it's not that big of a deal. it's about 10 dollars for every person in the US. No doubt that stuff is being used or sold or cannibalized, and whoever that equipment is being used against, Americans don't care. I know I don't. Billions are nothing compared to the total of our wars there started by GW Bush, cost of which is over 5 trillion. The costs of 9/11 are between 40 and 100 billion by comparison., maybe around 8000>10,000 dollars per American... Also allowed to happen under GW Bush.
My Father was in the USMC and fought in Okinawa.He enlisted at 17,with the help of my grandfather.He rarely spoke of the War.He would say"We just did what we had to do."He brought back pictures of him and his fellow Marines taking prisoners,coming out of underground tunnels.These men are true Heroes.Lets Never forget there Bravery!
A little know fact of the battle of Okinawa was when Shuri Castle was taken, they couldn't find a US flag to raise so General Buckner pulled his grandfather's Confederate battle flag out and raised it. "A rebel yell rang out over the battlefield and scared the hell out of the Japs" EB Sledge.
Gen. Buckner was actually the son (Simon B. Buckner, Jr.) of Confederate Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner. The old general, who had been in West Point with U.S. Grant and other famous generals of both sides, was 63 yrs old, when his son and namesake was born. Buckner was left to surrender to Grant at Ft. Pillow, after Gen's Floyd and Pillow fled. Buckner was traded after 5 mos captivity and resumed the fight until the end of the war. He attended Grant's funeral.
@@prentissmandrews2948 thank you for the correction. I've seen the flag in a museum and for some reason it stuck in my head that it was his grandfathers.
My dad served on the battleship, Uss Colorado. His ship took kamikaze hits. He made the statement once while telling of some of the days on board during those days of the battle "The flies were so full of dead meat from the bodies they would run into the ship and fall into the ocean."
My dad served in the Pacific in WWII and I have his captured Japanese rifle that still has the emperors crissanthom and seals in my office. It's absolutely priceless to me..Like he was.. Miss him so much..
I have one the same, purchased from a dealer in Rockhampton Queensland. He got a lot of captured guns from the deceased estates of Australian veterans. Mine is fully intact with the words H H HALLIHAN MILNE BAY scratched into the butt with what appears to be a bullet tip. I have researched our A W M but no Australian by that name served in New Guinea. Several emails to various U S unit museums and memorial sites to no avail. This was by far not the best specimen the dealer had, but the cartouche itself is worth it for me, just wish I could find some history of this bloke. Dont know how to put a photo in reply section but will put one up on my tiny channel.
My dad saw action in Europe and was shipped back to the states. He was told not to get comfortable as he would be getting shipped to the Pacific . Upon his arrival in the US, he was told of the two H- bomb attacks on Japan. He knew the war was over at that point. Many young men gave their lives in WW2. My dad never talked about the war until he was older. He even did an interview with my daughter for a class paper. She still has that paper.
The War in the Pacific was a no holds bared fight to the end death match. The rules were chosen by the Japanese and they reaped the rewards. I don't fault any American soldier for their actions.
True, though I don't necessarily fault the Japanese either. You've really gotta believe in what you're doing to fight as hard and as dirty as they did.
@@Aqueox It's a tradition to die for the Emperor. And it's a American tradition to try not to sacrifice soldiers in combat. So that is why Truman dropped the bomb. Truman and Kennedy were the last Presidents to be in combat. Harry was a artillery officer in WWI. He didn't want to see dead American kids coming home from war and when he had the ability to stop it he did the right thing. Saved my Dad and Uncle's life.
I served on Okinawa from June of '89 to June of '91. Being from Colorado I bad never experienced humidity before and thought as I got off of the rear of our 747, "Wow! Those engines sure are hot from such a long flight!?"😆 Tragically I realize that after a 5 minute walk across the tarmac to the terminal and drenched in sweat that it wasn't plane engines!
For everyone who has an ancestor who fought on Okinawa, take the time to document what you can so their sacrifices will not be forgotten by future generations. I documented what my Father told me and read several books about Okinawa to document the movements of his regiment. It was one of the best things I ever did!!! Amazon has several good books. I recommend starting with the ones written by Appleman and Leckie.
E.B. (Sledgehammer) Sledge wrote "With The Old Breed" which is about Pelilieu and Okinawa. It is the very best book about men in combat that I have read. The way the Marines lived with & treated each other was still the same during my time in Nam. I was stationed on Okinawa during 1964 and there were still signs of the war. That year Shuri Castle was torn down.
An uncle of mine was on an aircraft carrier that was struck by a kamikaze. After the fires were out they found the Japanese pilot and relieved him of his afterlife money. Those people were crazy.
My papaw was an original crew member on the Intrepid. What that ship went through would make a good tv series. He died in 1979 when I was only 10. I do know from my Granny that he was very close to where one of the kamikaze strikes occurred.
MY LATE FATHER-IN-LAW FOUGHT THERE AS A FLAMETHROWER.OUT OF 60 MEN IN HIS OUTFIT,ONLY 5 WALKED OFF THE ISLAND. I HAVE HIS PICTURES HE TOOK ON THE BATTLE AND HIS TIME IN CHINA AFTER THE WAR.HE LOVED THE FIRST MARINE DIVISION.HE PASSED IN 82. MAY THEY ALL REST IN HEAVEN BECAUSE THEY WHEN THROUGH HELL DURING THE WAR.
Most excellent, concise documentary format. I had an uncle, Alva Pierce, who captained the Apache signal ship for MacArthur in Pacific operations. Massive operations to beat the Japanese. The Japanese fought hard, but against a stirred giant.
Just imagine the uproar if we hadn’t dropped the atomic bombs, lost hundreds of thousands in the invasion of Japan, only to have to admit later that yes, we had a war-winning secret weapon in our back pocket all along. How would that have gone over with the families of every one of our casualties from invading Japan?
As a child I never heard my father his three brothers and may cousins and friends that served in WW2 ever speak about the war. As a vet I never spoke of my time in the service 68 to 71. People i worked with for over 30 years never knew i served. I am happy now that the public is interested in hearing about their sacrifice and personal stories.
This video really highlights both why the nuke was necessary and why its use caused Japan to surrender. The goal was to cause so many US casualties that they would be forced to negotiate. Japan was organizing its women and children to charge US troops with spears should the home islands be invaded. The use of one plane to devastate entire cities showed them how futile it would be
My dad was a Seabee in the war and took lots of photos of the carnage of japanese soldiers. I still look at them from time to time to remind myself how horrible war is and how we must try to avoid it at all cost.
Currently stationed on Okinawa. You can actually visit the location where Gen Buckner was killed (it's marked on Google Maps). The bit about the rain is spot-on. Okinawa is no joke when it rains, it's a torrential downpour. I think about the guys who had to fight during those conditions and find it insane they just dealt with it.
My dad and 2 of his high school friends were on different ships off Okinawa. His 2 friends were step-brothers. My dads ship, the USS Pensacola was hit by a shore battery, dozens were injured/killed. 1 friend was killed when the USS Aaron Ward was attacked by 20+ kamikaze planes. I knew the surviving friend growing up , but didnt know these things till after he and my dad had passed. That gave me a fresh perspective on my dad and that generation. He would answer questions if asked, but didnt volunteer much. I guess we know why. If i knew then what i know know i might have asked more, but i was way too young to understand.
My grandfather wouldnt speak of the atrocities (his words) he saw on both sides. He fought on Okinawa and I loved the man I knew growing up. Back in my youth he built every house he lived in (3), he was so incredibly talented. He once told me after begging him to share a story with me, he said I would grandson, but the pains in my heart would hurt to much knowing that what I told you would be in your soul forever and it would just be to much for him to carry. It was then I understood and I never asked again.
My uncle Joe mentioned the war only once. He was watching tv when some knucklehead said "that the bombs shouldn't have been used" This quite elderly man exploded like a A-bomb(pun intended). He then looked me in the eyes and told me that "after Okinawa I knew that there was no way in hell id ever survive invading the home islands! When those bombs were dropped it was like a miracle from out of nowhere " then he said something that i didn't understand at the time but today i do "Those bombs killed thousands but they saved millions"!!!
Thank you for covering Eugene Sledge's writings and recollections of the bloody fighting in which the USMC were engaged, against the Japanese forces. (I recall that Pellilu was the worst Island for complete barbarism.) Having personally sought a number of history programs, to cover this particular campaign, with each ignoring me. I truly believe that we are grown up sufficiently to face the true horrors of total war, and the dreadful and deep toll it wears on combatants. Cheers. 🤔🤔🤔🤔
My father in law, Robert Berry was a machinist mate aboard the USS John Bole & he was at Okinawa. He never said much about his experiences just that he hated the kamikaze's. When he arrived the island was all but secure but the air raids were still going on.
Thank you Dark Docs for all the work you put in making your videos unbiased, not like the hard work that those who prefer hatred and division (politicians & religion)
Read Sledge’s book, “With the old Breed”. By the time the marines landed the Japanese had no airforce, no Navy. They killed all the Japanese by going end to end twice. Correct me if I’m wrong, as I remember the total enemy killed was 135,000. With 10,000 marines lost. There is no way that would happen now. Our nation is not unified enough to do it. Paradoxically, the bombs saved millions of lives. The Japanese were prepared to defend to the last person on the main islands. It is likely that our military would have been forced to kill them all.
No one will ever convince me that the atomic bomb was not necessary. My father was a 21 year old Marine in 1945 having served on Kwajalein, Saipan and Tinian. He was sent to the states in May 1945 to get his weight back (he had lost 30 lbs and had malaria) so he would be ready for the proposed invasion of Honshu in November 1945. Several years ago I met a couple of Japanese exchange students at a barbecue on August 6th. They asked if Americans celebrated that day. I told them I did.
It was a political decision and not a military one. The primary aim was to demonstrate the power of the USA to the USSR. By then the Japanese had already asked for peace negotiations. Even leading American military officials were against the drops. Among others, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Nimitz and so on. The tale of the tens of thousands of soldiers saved by the atomic bombings was only published when the American public was shocked by the grisly images. This fairy tale is actually only believed in the USA, otherwise one would have to admit to terrible war crimes.
I had a great uncle who was an island hopping G.I. during WW2. He spent the rest of his life drinking from sun up until he passed out later in the day. In and out of the V.A. Suffering from PTSD. He never got over the war; a waste of what might otherwise have been a good life. RIP uncle Jim.
Much respect to your uncle!
The Nam did the same thing to my father, who was a door gunner in a Huey sled crew. Hey left the Nahm, but it never left him. T&Ps to ur uncle & all combat vets. ..they did the unspeakable so we wouldn't have too.
My Cousin was there. He also brought it home with him. RIP Warriors!
Island hoping on my dick.
Ohhhhhh.
(That's what she said).
Sorry completely immature.
All I read was island hoping gi
Same thing happening today from troops that were in Afghan and Iraq.
And then the US withdraws and left 80 billion dollars in Afghanistan. Imagine how you would feel if you fought and were maimed and watched your brothers die, then your own government abandons the region and leaves billions of dollars of the best equipment with the enemy.
I had a favorite professor at college who was in the Philippines during the war. He sometimes mentioned it in passing, with few details. But during the 50th anniversary of the war's end an alumni magazine had a feature about him, he had landed as part of the first wave ashore and did not expect to survive. He did though, with a vengeance. He passed just a few years ago at 98. Thank you Professor Kaldis, as a historian I have tried to be like you.
Thanks for your comment. It has reminded me of a teacher from my schooldays. He was not a well man and often had bouts of shaking and sweating where he would have to leave the classroom. It wasn't until after leaving school that someone explained to me that he had been a prisoner of the Japanese in Burma and he still suffered from malaria from those days. (God bless you Mr Charles Boyer. I know that you now rest in peace and tranquility for eternity.)
@gmansard641 - how is your comment relevant to the bombing war crime of Hiroshima? I think you have dialled in to the wrong station
My English professor was in the Bataan Death March. I wish I would have talked to him more about his experience, though I'm not sure how much he would have wanted to say.
@@jcbever1511 - he would say Hiroshima is much worse war crime than Bataan Death March
@@majorrgeek I don't agree with you.
Seriously both your channels and Mark Felton should take over “The History Channel” one month in order to inform audiences on what is real history. Thanks again for everything you do and wishing all a great summer + stay safe and healthy too.
Probably shouldn't equate this channel to Mark Felton.
That’s a great idea. If I win the lottery I don’t play… then I’ll make it happen 👍
Mark Felton is exceptionally bland in presentation, but I agree.
I miss when the history Channel actually covered history 😔
What are the other channels??
A friend of mine in college was in the Pacific war. He saw some hard combat but never spoke of it. He was a wonderful man but I know he was as hard as a rock in a “situation” and had his part to play in our success. Thank you Tom for your service!
I’m 72yrs young and will say my father in law would not speak of his time as a medic during 2nd WW .
The US had to act and the Japanese had to surrender to the Americans.
because...
The Russians were amassing a huge invasion army to the north.
The Japanese knew the Russians would take no prisoners.
@OnTheRiver66 - Atomic bombing Hiroshima civilians was a massive war crime killing women and children in cold blood is not war it is the work of cowards and totally un American, unpatriotic and not what Old Glory stands for and was a dis service to our brave fighting troops like Tom in the Pacific
@@majorrgeek No it wasn't. Knowing even more civilians would have died, had we NOT used the bomb.
So, you would have rather seen more civilians, and our guys die?
“With the old breed” is an enthralling read and an engrossing first person account of the pacific war
Also recommend Helmet for My Pillow
Agree on both!
@MrCombatmedic00 I was preliveded to have a Father who was in the 1st Marine Division. And when I was born and raised by two Christians
@@MrCombatmedic00 my Father was there Corporal I no in
As a Marine I was stationed on Okinawa for one year in 1981. Several times a month EOD would respond to various places on the island when unexploded ordinance was discovered. Most of these were found during construction of new buildings or roads.
I went to many former battle grounds and memorials throughout the island. It was surreal.
Semper Fi
Say a prayer for the 5th marine division.
I was there at Camp Schwab, you?
@@cooldaddy232
It was called camp Kinser or Fort Buckner depending on what year you were there. It was just north of Naha
Thank you for your service! 🗡⚔😎
My grandpa passed two years ago, at that time we found his discharge paperwork. He never talked about where he fought, all we knew was he was in the Pacific. Turns out he fought on Okinawa. This video shows me so much about why he was such a reserved man. Geezus he lived in hell. Miss you Grandpa 😘
I have the same story. I foung all his papers after my grandmother passed and we were cleaning out their house. He had passed a few years earlier. Never spoke of it. Always told not to ask about it. I found out why, he was a marine on okinawa and iwo jima and had a purple heart from being wounded from a kamikaze attack.
@@ClarkPesto Man they were a different sort, weren't they. Badass men with balls so big I'm amazed he could walk, and luck so long they should have played more lottery. I'm sure you miss your grandfather as much as I miss mine. Let us toast to their humbleness in life, and now in death their greatness of feats. 🤠🍻
@@p_campbell that they were. I do miss the old timer. He was quite the character. Went on to be a machinist and inventor, started his own manufacturing plant, still family owned by my uncle's. Cheers to the heroes of our worlds.
Your Grandpa was a badass and a member of the Greatest Generation. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
Respect.
Sledge’s book was quite possibly the best book I’ve ever read. Incredibly moving and brought humanity to the front row during conflict.
Agreed. I think it's time to read it again.
yes
It made me rethink what it really was to suffer, some of the stuff he talks about going through like all the skin falling off his feet after 2 straight weeks of fighting and no time to remove his boots really made me appreciate my current situation
I have read his book several times. His description of the horrors of war leave me with the realization that we will never be able to give them all the honor they deserve.
Meh, overrated.
My father was a designated corpsman with the 6th division and fought hand to hand with the enemy. He never spoke of the war with us growing up. My mother told me later that he had witnessed atrocities no human should ever have to see, and therefore felt no urge to speak of it.
A marine was hiding behind a wall when a suicide jap soldier let off a grenade. His whole arse landed on the knees of another soldier. He asked, "am I hit that bad???"
See The World at War for this and other first hand accounts. It helped me understand my dad.
My father was a corpsman in Vietnam during the Tet. He never spoke of it, except with me on rare occasion. That's when one knows to STFU and listen.
There was a very close call where he would have died while tending to a fallen Marine that could have led to his death, if another Marine hadn't turned around to "check on Doc". I'm alive by extension because of that Marine and probably the only one without familial connection to the Marines who celebrates the USMC birthday every year.
My Lebanese Uncle Louis Essid was killed in this battle. Thank You for putting this together. My Grandfather (his Brother) even at the age of 80 could never talk about it without Crying. He always wore some form of Black Attire the rest of his Life.
God bless you
So sad.
My Dad was a Navy Corpsman for the first week at Okinawa in April 1945. It was his 13th and last battle in WW2 before coming back to the states. He had been at sea 23 months, crossed the equator 10 times on 3 different ships, and saw everything. A Golden Shellback. Great video Dark Docs.
My dad was damaged in Okinawa and my uncle was KIA in europe, I was a Corpsman in Vietnam and lost a lung , upon returning to the states at LAX a pretty little hippie girl with a flower in her hand walked up to me, smiled, spit in my face and called me a baby killer. I'm glad this didn't happen to the greatest generation.
@@hellskitchen10036 Thank you for your service John.
@@hellskitchen10036Welcome home, doc!!! 🫡
I had to lookup golden shellback. I crossed both the equator and date line multiple times. But never both at the same time!
My Father told me he was amazed by the bravery of the Corpsmen who risked their lives to save the wounded.
Dr. Eugene B Sledge was my Biology professor at the University of Montevallo for 4 semesters. He is truly an undeclared WW2 hero.
His true life autobiography ""WITH THE OLD BREED"" is NYT best seller and used to be required reading in Marine Corp Boot Camp. This book Eugene B Sledge I recommend if one wants to know what the U.S. Military went through in the South Pacific.
PLEASE DO A DOCUMENTARY ON THIS HERO!
Sounds like he's a fash.
I read it and it's a damn fine book. May God bless him and all the Greatest Generation.
Have read With The Old Breed 3 or 4 times. It’s considered the best account of the Marines in the Pacific. Was reading it at the bar of my local pub, a few years ago. A chap stood next to me and got a beer. It was Australian actor Gary Sweet, who played Gunny Elmo Hanney in The Pacific series. Like a good fellow, left him alone to enjoy his beer.
Well you're in luck, there's an HBO max show called The Pacific where Sledge is the main character.
Sledge was your teacher, get outta here!That’s so cool
My uncle Raymond Schmid fought with the 5th Marines alongside E.B. Sledge on Peleliu. Very badly wounded there, he died 20 years later of complications from his wounds, happily married with four children to a wartime Navy nurse. God bless all the men (my Dad, my uncles, so many more) and women on the home front who sacrificed so much for us in WWII.
Amen,the world of the west knows nothing of patriotism,&would rather kneel to stand for flag!Shame
❤️🤍💙
Hiroshima is a war crime and was a dis service to our brave fighting Allies in the Pacific who really won the war
My sister's father-in-law was a Navy Corpsman on Peleliu.
My Father-in-law made seven invasions in the Pacific, including Tarawa, and Saipan. He was in the first landing craft to land on Saipan, an hour before the next ones.
I served on Okinawa for almost all of 1970 as a US Marine. We spent some time training up on the north end of Okinawa and I remember leading a squad exercise down a small ravine hemmed in by dense undergrowth and trees and small caves all over the place. I remember thinking that only 25 years before we would have had to fight our way down that ravine. One weekend on liberty a few of us paid for a ride on an Okinawan ferry out to Ie Shima island and we saw the memorial for Ernie Pyle, the war correspondent. We then took a steep trail up the back side of the huge rock formation mentioned in the video. I still have some pictures that we took from the top as you could pretty much see the whole island from up there. Really enjoyed this video and just thank God that I was born in 1950 instead of 1925.
I was on Okinawa as a dependent from 1970-72. My dad was in SF at camp Hardy. We lived in Ishikawa for about a year or so and then moved to Sukiran. Graduated from Kubasaki HS.
I was in the USAF at Naha in 1969-70. I spent time on Ie Shima and remember the Ernie Pyle monument. We had a short runway on the island. You could find remnants of a Japanese airfield amid the low growing brush.
I visited a number of sites near Naha Air Base, like Suicide Cliff and the memorial to Gen Buckner. He was killed by an artillery shell. I wish I had known more about the history of the battle when I was there.
@@hamiltonconway6966 Most of our few hours of free time as Marines while on Okinawa involved a beach and alcohol, Naha and alcohol, the "Topper Club" and alcohol, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
@@robertslusser6753 I understand and relate to that. I drank my share of beer when I was there. I seldom touch it now.
I visited that same island in 2018 for some snorkeling together with a native Okinawan and two ladies from Tokyo. Despite being a very hot day, we enjoyed the snorkeling. Then I came across the memorial to Ernie Pyle that indicated to me at least that this was sacred ground akin to Gettysburg. Men had fought and died for these jagged coral rocks. It is not lost on me the bravery of the American soldiers so that later generations like us, of both Americans and Japanese, can leisurely swim about on holiday.
After years of silence about his experience as a signal man in the Pacific, my dad handed me E.B. Sledge's book. It profoundly changed my ideas about my dad, his generation, and the freedom they fought for.
As a teenager in the 60s, my Dad who was in the Navy during WW2 and Pearl Harbor and then his ship being torpedoed twice showed signs of PTSD. I believe he was fighting it internally (similarly to my own experience after Vietnam) along with many of the WW2 guys. It was termed "shell shock" and no VA benefits back then. Same with my Uncle Jim who enlisted at 40 years old and assigned to combat engineering in the Army. He received the French Cross de Guere and it was pinned on him by Charles De Gaul.
My late father-in-law was wounded at Okinawa. After he was wounded (three times) he carried another soldier to an aid station. He was awarded the Bronze Star.
@@Forcix con?
@@dg7708 CONservative
@@Forcix you sound like a chinese shill. hows communism working for you
Similar story to my grandpa's brother. He was in Korea when the Chinese attacked. He carried a wound man a mile to an aid station. Then the doc there told him he couldn't go back to the line. He had been shot thru the arm and hadn't noticed. Went home and had problems with that arm the rest of his life. Became a lumberjack. Quiet man, didn't talk about much.
@@Forcix seek a therapist
Thank your dad and grandfather for their service. I'm sorry for all they suffered, but I appreciate them.
My son did 3 tours in Iraq and doesn't talk about it. He has gone thru ptsd, too. He and his brothers got hurt numerous times. He has saved his brothers, as some told, at his wedding reception. I had no idea. He and one of his brothers, both got a purple heart. They all have gone days without food and water and helped out the marines alot, that were pinned down. I appreciate all troops, soldiers, marines, all of our divisions of military men. Past and present! All who died or are still here, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE AND SACRIFICES!! ❤❤ God bless all of you and your families!!!
I once wrote an article for a history magazine about the Allied generals who were lost in WWII. Here are some of the facts regarding Lieutenant General Buckner that I learned in my research.
He was the only Army officer to command US Marines in combat during the war. There is a photo of Buckner standing with some of his staff just before the artillery shell hit. There was only the one shot fired. It hit a rock nearby and a splinter of the rock, not shell, pierced his side and nicked his heart. Ironically, he was the only one hit and at the time was standing furthest away from the rock than anyone else with him. He was also looking through his binoculars at that moment, so his arms were raised. It is thought that had his arms been down at his side, he would have suffered a very nasty arm wound, but nothing more serious. He initially survived, but died on the operating table a short time later.
Sad.
@@jean-louislalonde6070 Very. As are all war deaths.
You'd be very interested in the book "The One Thousand Mile War" - There's a great deal of depth and color about General Buckner. After reading that book, you can't help but love the man.
@@dtaylor10chuckufarle Sorry but he was very racist . Look it up ... Think , Alcan Highway .
Buckner was one of four US Lieutenant Generals KIA during the war, along with Lt. Gens Leslie McNair, Frank Maxwell Andrews, and Millard Harmon. Buckner and McNair were both posthumously promoted to the rank of General
(4 stars) in 1954.
The Japanese strategy at Okinawa was to inflict so many casualties on the USMC that it would deter the US from invading Japan because the tenacity shown would mean that the USMC would take 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 casualties to conquer mainland Japan. Their strategy worked but backfired and did not give them the desired results. Truman, faced with 4 times the number of casualties we had already suffered in the entire war easily decided on the alternative; the atomic bombs, in order to not incur those crazy high casualties.
And thereby saved many Japanese lives.
so that was the "shokcing event??"
100% true. Most people dont know much about the fighting in Japan.
After the war, Truman was asked why he had the Bomb dropped. His answer? "What would I have told the mothers of another MILLION dead soldiers, had we NOT used the bomb...That I could have ended the war immediately, but chose not to?"
YOUR mostly CORRECT, except, the " MARINES " Part. The U.S. Army was the Main Invasion Force. the Marines, Bless there HEART, didn't Have anywhere NEAR 500,000 Men under Arms. much less a Million. I am sure that Australia & New Zealand were going to do there Part in the Invasion as they could also. & had it drawn OUT YOU can BET the British would have sent troops also. BUT it would have been a VERY BLOODY MESS !
Okinawa was a brutal combat theater. Living there for four years and visiting the battle locations discussed in this video definitely grew my respect and admiration for the soldiers and sailors who fought and died there.
The losses were enormous for the Americans, over 70,000 of them became casualties including 12,520 dead. The battle stands as the only battle in the Pacific War were both commanders were killed on both sides. The Japanese losses were catastrophic with almost all of them killed (around 100,000) with only several thousand mostly wounded taken prisoners. The Civilians of Okinawa also suffered dearly with 150,000 of them killed. The battle stands as the bloodiest battle in the Pacific War
To put the civilian number in perspective, local officials estimated the pre war population to be around 300,000. Other sources estimate losses closer to 25%. Either way, it's horrific.
Many of the civilian loses are due to the population believing the propaganda of how the US would treat them.
@@bigbadjohn7053 I think the same thing happened at Iwo Jima before
Dont forget that both the american commander AND his son died on Okinawa.
@@navyreviewer what was his name, I can’t find the name
@@emmanuelfernandez04 Simon Bolivar Buckner.
My father was wounded on Bougainville, and back in the US by '45, though he spent months in an Army hospital in San francisco. He was reported KIA in the local papers, but his mother never believed he was dead. My mom recounted how she was sitting on the porch with grandma, shelling peas, when he came walking up the driveway, in DeArmanville, Alabama, in his dress uniform, with a great big grin on his face. They hadn't seen him for three years.
damn dude that needs to be a movie
Old man here. Awesome story! That would have been great to see! God Bless him.
What a hero
That would be Letterman Hospital in the Presidio of San Francisco. I had my tonsils taken out there in the 1950's.
God Bless Your Father.
Had to be the greatest day for his parents. God bless them all.
I was born on Okinawa in 1951 and lived there 14 years. The signs of the battle were everywhere, but the most striking thing was when I went back in 1999 and got to tour some of the areas I grew up in. At first I had a rough time reconciling my memories what I was seeing.
Then I understood.
There were Trees!
When I was there the jungle grasses were taller than the trees that were trying to grow back.
I lived on Okinawa 1957-59. I remember finding a grenade . A man came a took from me saying he would give me a million dollars.Never got my million . There was weapons all over that island left over from war.
It remains a mystery to me why these days are all but forgotten in our modern world. This stuff should be properly taught to us all, so it is never forgotten and never repeated
Amen
It's revisionist history being taught in schools now, to take away national identity and national pride. Precursors to communism.
Human beings as a whole are incapable of learning from history. An individual can learn from studying the past in order to avoid certain future blunders, but collectively we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
Only the new Wars matter to the MIC
Yet it will be repeated with an even more powerful Foe. CHINA !
My Dad went into the Marines at 17 in 43 and Island Hopped to Okinawa. On Okinawa he was severely injured and spent the next year in traction in a Naval Hospital. He was let out and sent home and every 6 months would go back to the Hospital or VA to go into traction and get his back straighten out. He had massive scars from his left shoulder to right hip and all down his legs. He also always had jungle rot in his feet. He came home married and they had my sis in 49, my bro in 52, and me in 57. Both my Dad and Mom are dead due to age.
❤️🤍💙🇺🇸❤️
Thanks for sharing. Those men had a real grit and represented more than the fight. What a tough thing, war. I'm glad you are alive, that your Dad made it out. I appreciate him and your family.
It is so good that he got to have pleasant post-war experiences, so may did not.
Was your dad in second division marines. My dad's first battle was Tarawa
I remember the end of the Okinawa episode of The Pacific and how brutal it was. Our narrator mentioning how the Marines were losing their humanity and sanity was spot-on.
Those Marines absolutely did not lose their 'humanity.' Those Marines, and GI's fought for those lost at Pearl Harbor, all the oppressed among the Pacific Islands, for those murdered along the Bataan Death March, and absolutely mostly they fought for their fellow soldiers. The most important thing for these guys were to make sure that it could not be said of them that their inaction, or incorrect action led to the death of a fellow soldier. I suppose your mostly just good at parroting S--T like that, without understanding S--T about what your saying..
I served in Nam. My greatest respects for the brave men and women who challenged the japanese, took their best shots and still won. May you live forever in the halls of heroes.
I have the utmost respect for you also. You went through hell in Nam. My father and uncle were in Nam . My father committed suicide. My uncle was 101st airborne and fought at hamburger hill. He barely told me a few things he experienced before I left for the Marine Corps. He still has issues and won't talk about it.
@@jaredevildog6343 Thank you. And may your uncle find peace.
@Jesus Gutierrez No I didn't. I was in 3 and 4 corp mostly. That's low lands, rice fields, and jungle. I was, mostly, at fire bases forward lookout bases.
You should have stayed there, CON, fash!
They know how to bash fash.
@@Forcix When you come down from whatever has blown your minuscule mind GFY.
During the fighting depicted in the movie "Hacksaw Ridge", my Father's regiment was fighting to clear the eastern flank of the ridge a few hundred yards away. My Father never spoke about the war or the Bronze Star he was awarded. When he was very old and I asked him to tell me everything so his sacrifice would not be forgotten in our family. I was surprised when he opened up, and all the names of places he remembered, Cactus Ridge, Kakazu Ridge, Shuri Castle, Conicle Peak, Love hill, Sugar Loaf, Dick Hill, and others.
I remember visiting Shuri Castle one day when I served there as a Marine in 1970. We were on liberty and I remember us walking along a long, wide wall of the castle that evening. There was a small family owned zoo at the base of part of the wall and I remember they had wire over the top of the monkey cage so the monkeys could not climb up the castle wall, which was the back wall of their enclosure. Surely a far cry from what those Marines went thru there in 1945. Semper Fi.
If your father is still with , you , give him a good long hug and a heartfelt thank you.
My step father told me about the fight for Shuri Castle, where he was wounded by mortar fire. They had to teach him how to walk again, took him a year to recover. He carried shrapnel with him the rest of his life
@@robertslusser6753Pretty sure the army 77th division was facing the Shuri castle when it fell . My father was a member of the 305th ID there. Later he was hit taking the last hill on that island.
I dont know what kind of patriotism level some people are looking for,these people sacrificed their very lives so that we can continue to live in freedom and harmony, we must always be thankful to this selfless great generation .
Desmond Doss was a real life, genuine badass hero. Your saying he saved "dozens" doesn't do him justice, although technically accurate. He saved 75 men. You don't get much more badass than that. A1C Pitsenbarger saved 60 in Vietnam at one battle. These are special men, the Medics, Corpsmen and SAR's, a different breed. Thank God we have them.
liked his movie on t.v. here in auckland city.
My uncle was a medic, 8th. Army, in Italy. They may not have carried guns but they were still at the very front, going out under fire with only the hope that the enemy would respect their Red Cross armband as their only protection - although the barbaric Japanese would never have respected that. There is a statue 20 miles (South Shields) away to John Simpson Kirkpatrick who at Gallipoli 1916 was one of 3 medics that famously used donkeys to get the wounded away over rough terrain at that theatre of war, unfortunately killed there.
My father was in the Marines in WW2. He was at Guadalcanal, Bouganville, Peleliu, and Okinawa. For him, the worst was Peleliu. Just like Tarawa, the Higgens boats were stuck on the reef forcing them to wade ashore under fire. Peleliu was supposed to take 3 days, but instead it was closer to 3 months. 1st Marines took 70% casualties and was considered wiped out. He said the way they got through it was deciding they were already dead. He was heading for a staging area for the invasion of Japan when the news of the atomic bombs arrived, which is why I'm here to write this.
My great uncle served in the US Army during WW2 as an infantryman, but he was deployed to the Pacific to operate under MacArthur. He served on the frontlines, fought directly against Japanese soldiers, and managed to get through his tour unscathed, but he knew, even back then, that his experience was an extremely rare exception to the norm, especially how, at least as far as he could tell, he never hit or killed any Japanese despite taking shots at them. He was no pacifist by any stretch, but he absolutely relished the times he did not have to do any fighting.
He was grateful that he never killed anyone (again, as far as he knew). His squad was in quite a few close-range shootouts, but they never found blood or bodies of Japanese soldiers where they fought, though they did find spent ammo or abandoned weapons, the latter becoming more common towards the end of his tour. They suspected that the bulk of their fights were more akin to harassment, especially the later fights, given that Japanese weapon quality was plummeting by then (not much point in keeping a weapon you can't fix later). As far as his squad was concerned, they would not speak of their miraculous experience until after the war, out of fear of jinxing it and thus ending the miracle prematurely.
No one in his squad received any decorations beyond a few Purple Hearts (to reiterate, he came out physically unharmed), nor did they achieve anything particularly notable, at least not in a fighting sense, but to them, surviving mostly intact was enough of a commendation for them.
That's honestly funny and strange as Hell that he and his squad had that happen to them.
Makes you wonder if that whole "don't jinx it" thing has any weight.
Honestly the prospect of killing somebody's son or somebody's husband or somebody's father makes me sick in my belly.
@@harukrentz435 Agreed but unfortunately necessary.
Thank you. Your comments helped me better understand my Nam tour of duty.
MY HUSBAND ONLY ONCE BROKE DOWN AND SOBBED ABOUT HIS TWO COMBAT TOURS IN VIETNAM…..1967-1969, INCLUDING TET OFFENSIVE……WHICH WAS AFTER HIS WORKD WAR TWO FATHER’s PASSING IN 2019.
HE HAD BEEN SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN HIS LUMBAR SPINE (TWO MONTHS IN TRACTION) BY A VIET CONG MORTAR BLAST JULY 1968. AFTER A TERRIBLE CAR WRECK IN NOVEMBER 1989 INVOLVING TWO RUTTING DEER THAT CRUSHED HIS SPINE & RE-INJURED HIS WOUNDS, SINKING HIM INTO AN ALMOST COMATOSE STATE OF DEPRESSION FOR THREE YEARS, HE WAS AWARDED 100% DISABILITY IN 1991.
HOW HE PREPARED ALL THE NORTHERN DEFENSES OF HIS TASK FORCE UNIT AT DUC PHO BEGINNING HIS ARRIVAL LATE NOVEMBER 1967 UNTIL THE SECOND NIGHT OF TET (THEY WERE HEAVILY MORTARED & HALF THE HUEYS WERE DESTROYED ON THE GROUND THE FIRST NIGHT). THEY WERE ATTACKED THE SECOND NIGHT BY COMMUNIST SOLDIERS THAT HE SAID “LOOKED LIKE A TIDAL WAVE OF HOWLING MONSTERS ALL COMING RIGHT AT MY CENTER POINT MACHINE GUN BUNKER”. HE ORDERED HIS MACHINE GUNS (EIGHT 50 CAL & THE SAME IN M-60s) NOT FIRE & HE HAD ORDERED ALL HIS SOLDIERS THAT THEY WERE EACH STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO USE THEIR RIFLES ON AUTOMATIC BECAUSE OF JAMMING……ONLY THEN THE MACHINE GUNS DID OPEN FIRE THE COMMUNISTS BEGAN TO “PILE UP” IN HIS LINES OF CONCERTINA WIRE “V” FORMATIONS ……. SO WHEN THE MACHINE GUNS STARTED, THEY ENEMY FELL ON TOP OF EACH OTHER IN HUGE NUMBERS, AND THE MANY SOLDIERS MY HUSBAND HAD LYING UNDER SAND BAGGED CULVERTS SHOT THOSE WHO WERE “UNDER” THE DEAD BODIES. AND THEN, WHEN THEY BEGAN TO SLOW DOWN, HE CALLED IN FOR “PRE-PLOTTED” AIR BURST ARTILLERY.
THE ATTACK BEGAN AROUND I:30 AM & WAS OVER BEFORE 6:AM!!! SOME OF HIS NEWEST SOLDIERS BECAME EXCITED & RAN OUT INTO THE KILLING ZONE……AND SOME GOT SICK & THREW UP BECAUSE THE DEATH WAS 100% & WAS ESTIMATED AT MORE THAN 450 ENEMY SOLDIERS…..BUT MOST WERE JUST PIECES OF HUMAN BODIES…..AND AN OCEAN FLOOD OF BLOOD 🩸. LATER THAT MORNING, BULL DOZERS WERE BROUGHT OUT THAT DUG DEEP DITCHES AND THE “SOUP & SLIME” WAS PUSHED INTO THEM. THE REALITY OF THE DEFENSE WAS SO TERRIBLE THAT OUT OF 450+ DEAD, ONLY 32 ENEMY RIFLES WERE SALVAGED AND RE-USED BY MY HUSBAND & SOME OF HIS SOLDIERS!!! (THEY THREW THEIR OWN “PLASTIC TOY” M-16s UNDER TRUCK WHEELS & CLAIMED THEM AS “COMBAT LOSS”!!!
JUST AS EVERYBODY BEGAN CELEBRATING, MY HUSBAND WAS TOLD THAT NO AMERICANS HAD BEEN WOUNDED BUT ONE SOLDIER HAD BEEN KILLED. MY HUSBAND HAD SPECIFICALLY TOLD THAT YOUNG BOY TO STAY INSIDE HIS BUNKER BUT HE DISOBEYED AND CRAWLED ONTOP OF A BUNKER THAT DID NOT HAVE A COVER OVER THE GUN NEST, SO IT WAS NOT TO BE USED. THAT YOUNG SOLDIER WAS A 5,000 FUEL TRUCK DRIVER WHO HAD CONVOYED NUMEROUS TIMEs & HAD BEEN REPEATEDLY SHOT AT. AND - HE WAS GOING TO FLY OUT TO THE BIG AIR BASE AT CAN RANH BAY THE NEXT MORNING AT 8:AM…..AND CATCH A “FREEDOM BIRD” TO GO HOME.
WHEN HIS BODY WAS FOUND, HE HAD LARGE WOUNDS ON HIS BACK & HIS FACE WAS GREY FROM LOSS OF BLOOD. THE AIR BURSTS MY HUSBAND CALLED IN THAT SAVED OVER 200 SOLDIERS THAT NIGHT AT DUC PHO HAD KILLED HIM. YEARS LATER, AFTER WE WERE MARRIED AND HE WAS STUDYING FOR HIS MASTERS IN THEOLOGY AT WHEATON COLLEGE (BILLY GRAHAM’s ALMA MATER), ONE OF THE OTHER LIEUTENANTS WHO WAS WITH MY HUSBAND THAT NIGHT & LIVED IN CHICAGO, TOLD ME WHEN MY HUSBAND SAW THE DEAD SOLDIER, HE WALKED OFF BEHIND A BARRIERS SURROUNDING THE FUEL STORAGE AREA, AND CRIED BITTER TEARS OVER THAT YOUNG SOLDIER’s DEATH. AND WHEN HE FOUND OUT HE WAS BEING RECOMMENDED FOR THE SILVER STAR, HE WENT WILD WITH RAGE & RIPPED EVERYTHING UP! BUT DURING HIS SECOND TOUR (HE WENT BACK WHEN HIS COLONEL TOLD HIM THERE WERE FORTY NEW SOLDIERS ON THE WAY FROM AMERICA & DID NOT HAVE AN EXPERIENCED OFFICER TO LEAD THEM) HE WAS SEVERELY WOUNDED CHASING ONE FRIGHTENED SOLDIER “BACK” ONTO HIS MACHINE GUN WHILE THEY WERE BEING MORTARED, (TWO MONTHS IN TRACTION)…….AND THEN ASSIGNED COMPANY COMMANDER OF A VIETNAMESE MILITIA UNIT FOR HIS LAST THREE MONTHS…..AND WAS JUMPED BY TWO VIET CONG SOLDIERS, KNOCKING HIS RIFLE OUT OF HIS HANDS, AND TRYING TO CAPTURE “THE AMERICAN ADVISOR” ON HIS VERY LAST NIGHT PATROL…..KILLING ONE WITH HIS KNIFE & SNAPPING THE OTHER ONE’s NECK (BUT ONLY AFTER RIPPING HIS EYES OUT)!
SUCH IT IS WHEN A 19 YR OLD WHO COULD NOT BAIT A FISH HOOK WITHOUT GETTING SICK, IS DRAFTED, TRAINED TO KILL……AND DISCOVERS A MONSTER LIVING INSIDE OF HIM.
AND BILLYBONER & MURDER INC KILLERY CLIT……LABEL HIM & 3.7 MILLION OTHER AMERICANS …… A DRUG ADDICTED, BABY KILLING, TICKING TIME BOMB “LOSER”.
PLEASE, AMERICA 🇺🇸, VOTE FOR PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP & VICE PRESIDENT VANCE!!! ❤❤❤🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 🙏 🙏🙏 ✝️✝️✝️ 🤰🤰🤱🤱👨🍼👨🍼
I was a US Marine like my father before me. My father fought in Okinawa and received two purple hearts and a bronze star for valor during his service.
You ARE a US Marine. SEMPER FI !
My great-uncle was on Okinawa too...KIA, we suspect by Japanese guerilla fighters.
Semper gumby to your pops and you sir.
Like fash father, like fash son.
Thank you both for your service.
Eugene Sledge.. oh man. The Pacific was seriously one of the best pieces of film ever made.
I knew veterans of the Pacific theater. When asked about their experiences, the only reply I ever got was, "Pray to God that you never know war."
We knew my grandfather served in the Pacific in the Navy. It wasn’t until I was old enough to tell him I was thinking of serving when I got old enough that he told me. He had been on ammunition ships. He had 3 shot out from under him. Believed to be the sole survivor of one, he crawled around on a scrap of an island for a month before rescued.
Great video! And appropriate video clips for the historical narrative.
The fighting efforts of the US Army in the Pacific is often overlooked. The Marines fought valiantly and certainly added to their illustrious history.
But soldiers were there in the Pacific Theatre from Day 1.
My Father-In-Law was a Gunners Mate on the USS Intrepid. He earned 5 Battle Stars for his service. Received a Commendation for his efforts in helping shoot down numerous Kamikazes.
As one Marine Officer said about the battle, “Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue” among the Soldiers & Marines there.
Amen.
What a Great Generation!
One mistake the narration makes is when it states that the bombing of mainland Japan was dependent on the invasion of Okinawa. Not so-- the strategic bombing of Japan was already underway, and had been for months, from the Marianas. Perhaps what was meant was a _tactical_ air campaign in preparation for the invasion of the mainland, but it's potentially confusing.
Shout out 2 all the Vets that fought 4 our freedom then an now🎖🥀🙏🏼
They didn't fight for my freedom. They fought for international bankers.
History should never be forgotten.A great video .Thank you.From Bulgaria.
My grandfather was in 5th Marines on Okinawa during that time. It's a wonder he made it back. In the 90s when I was stationed over there I went a visited some of the same areas that he crawled across so many years before. It was surreal. God bless them all
My English father was in a ship, heading for Japan. They were told that the attrition rate would be 98%. As they came closer, the ship slowed. Then they heard that the Internationally developed atomic bomb had been dropped and the war was over. If the bombs were not dropped, none of my brothers and sisters, our children and grandchildren would have occurred.
In the film footage there's a brief shot of a troop transport. The PA-28.I had to stop and stare at it. My father was on that ship when that photo was taken. He served on that ship from Africa, Sicily, Normandy and then to the Pacific campaign. He was a pharmacist mate. The ship was the Charles Carroll. He died on June 6th 1975. Through my father in-law a man who served through WWII, Korea and Vietnam he was able to give my dad a full military burial at sea. It was done off the coast of Normandy. We went in 2008 to walk the beaches and visit the cemetery and say goodbye to dad.That's all I can say.
The horrors that were witnessed by our service personnel are beyond belief.
I read "With The Old Breed" and it was by far one of the best first hand accounts of war. Robert Leckie's " A Helmet For My Pillow" was also fantastic!
Agreed. Two of my favorites.
I'm proud of my dad and his brothers (my uncles), for fighting in WW2, they truly were the finest generation.
The Marines were only half of the Tenth Army. My dad was in the Army side in the Okinawa Battle as a Signal Corp telephone linesman. The Army troops were feeling it too. Okinawa convinced the Brass that the Bomb instead of Invasion was the way to go.
I'd have to agree, contrary to what more than one Dilbert in this comments section boldly asserts (in their views, we dropped em simply bcz Americans r by nature bloodthirsty).
Needless to say, i gave a stout rebuttal to their not_quite_ready_for_primetime perspective.
My Father was in the 96th Army Division. Okinawa was going to serve as the base for the Japan mainland invasion. It is doubtful he would have survived that invasion. If the Bomb had not been dropped, me and my siblings probably wouldn't exist.
On Okinawa There were 103,000 US Army personnel, 80,000 Marines and 18,000 Navy Personnel.
Who else looks forward to getting a notification from dar docs He's always going over stuff in history that I'm interested in & hes thorough with all his research and presentation!
Yes yes!!
Absolutely!
By “research” do you mean copying directly from Wikipedia?
Not to mention the other 'Dark-X' channels. Plenty of time between notifications to catch up on stuff unseen before discovering them.
There are inaccuracies in many of his videos. In this one he claimed that after Okinawa fell the US could finally bomb Tokyo with B-29's... but B-29's had been bombing Tokyo from Saipan for nearly a year before Okinawa was taken. That's just an example, and why his videos are amateurish.
If it was this bad taking Okinawa, imagine what it would have been like taking the mainland the same way. The carnage of two nuclear bombs, as horrific as it was, doesn't even come close to the slaughterhouse on both sides that would have been an invasion.
My dad and all my uncles served in the Pacific. They had a lot of stories for us kids about basic and hijinks in Honolulu. But they never talked about anything west of Hawaii. To a man they all agreed the bombs were the only way. The Japanese were so fanatic that taking Japan would have been total bloodbath.
@@kmbbmj5857 Every last man I heard in my childhood talking about his experiences in the Pacific theatre was adamant about one thing: NEVER trust the Japanese. Never. The same was told to me by a fellow veteran many years later who had became a military historian.
Yes, on both sides.
If the bombs were not readied in time or failed to work plan B was the massive use of chemical weapons on the Japanese mainland.
Special test sites were built at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah replicating Japanese defensive positions encountered during the island hopping campaign. Goats and sheep were tethered inside the defensive positions and bombarded with various war gasses available at the time.
Like the A-bombs, poisonous gas was deemed a better alternative than US casualties which were expected to number over 1 million.
totally agree!!! this has been my position and opinion going back 40 years.
Semper Fi. These guys were the greatest generation. Strong men.
On Okinawa There were 103,000 US Army personnel, 80,000 Marines and 18,000 Navy Personnel.
Great men, irrefutably, but the greatest? That's debatable. What about the Revolutionary War? They founded the republic against the empire upon which the sun did not set.
Thanks. Best short documentary I've seen on Okinawa. After being g stationed there for 3 years (1970-73) and visiting the historic sights, the memories flooded back.
Dang. My grandad played for the Philadelphia A's and then went and fought in the Pacific Theater. When he got back he played for the Boston Red Sox with Ted Williams and other vets. Real men.
Great content as always, unfortunately yt is piling on so many ads it's becoming harder and harder to enjoy popular channels like this.
I served 2 years on "the Rock" while in the Air Force , what almost no historian ever mentions or fails to realize is that Okinawa wasn't part of Japan until a few decades before the Battle of Okinawa. They had their own language and the civilian population was treated very poorly, even brutally at the end, by the Imperial forces. Many of the Okinawans were glad that the Marines were victorious and very thankful for their remarkably different treatment after the war. I have never met more gracious hosts.
It was the Army that dominated Okinawa. Not the Marines. The Marines only had 88,000 men on the island whereas the Army had 130,000 men doing the brunt of the fighting.
As we all know, the Marines were not very capable to do this type of warfare.
@@mochatech121What are you talking about? The marines relieved the army after they got chewed up in the south. Marines took over while the army re grouped, then joined the fight again. Read some books.
@@JJ-wk5wh You do realize that you are talking about another subject... I never mentioned anything about " relieving". I was mentioning " dominate".
I read plenty of history about WW2... Not the many storybooks of WW2.
Read my previous comment... That is what I was talking about.
@@mochatech121 as we all know... you don't know what you are talking about.
My Dad was in the USMC there with the native Okinawans, they came to him and thrust their youngster toward his arms and said: '"Take to America!" Obviously he explained that was impossible. Dad was the "Old Man" at the age of 27. While on a gentler setting near shore an Okinawan was searching for fish. My Dad and the boys got some dynamite and threw it in the water. A tuna turned belly up; the man saw it and swam to it wrapping his arms around the tail. But then the tuna was only stunned and lumbered in the water with the man being dragged over the coral. He would not let go and the fish finally tired. As the man stood up in the shallow water, the smile on him showed his pride of the catch as blood dripped down his chest from the coral. Dad made it through all without taking a bullet.
Thank you.
My father fought as a young Marine Corps officer during the Pacific War.
My Dad served on a ship in the North Atlantic in the last years of the war. After seeing this fine but heartbreaking video of the carnage our brave gallant heroic strong troops faced in taking Okinawa, I'm glad to be alive. If he'd been deployed to the Pacific, I might not be here. Thank you again, those who served in WWII.
You videos and narratives are more than professional. They are of the best information and images I've ever seen over the years of learning more about the war that my father fought in as a US Army medic in the Pacific. Keep up the excellent work.
Forever grateful to the Greatest Generation.
I presume you refer equally to the Japanese, Germans, and Italians.
@@chrislee176 In my opinion, "The Greatest Generation" does not refer, simply, to "brave soldiers". Of course brave men were on all sides, but that is not the meaning of the phrase.
The way I take the phrase is more specific to those free men and women who voluntarily sacrificed their own lives and freedoms to defeat the Totalitarian Fascist regimes of the Japanese, Germans, and Italians.
The meaning, to me, is a refection of Western Ideals in the common soldier, and all the families and the rest of society which supported them. It was a learned but also inherent understanding of a Western tradition going back to the Hellenic Greeks.
So no, I would not include the hive like, Eastern-based mindset of even the bravest of our Axis enemies in the phrase. They are not "Great"... enemies of the Western Tradition cannot be "Great" in my eyes. Brave, yes. Strong and determined, yes. But they were indoctrinated in the worst of humanities ideals, and that can never be "great" to me.
@@proto57
I take your point; neither bravery, nor soldiering, is, per se, great. I also concur that hive-like thinking is anathema to the best of the Western Tradition -and/though increasingly I realise that this is true also of the best of any tradition.
Limiting the kudos to the West presupposes that individuals there were less hive-minded than elsewhere. Perhaps this is statistically so, though witnessing how indoctrinated masses have acted regarding covid, NATO/US/Ukraine/Russian from 2014 to the present, the welfare/warfare States, the Unnecessary & Forever Wars, fiat currencies imposed with legal-tender laws, the bloating of the State, and the list only grows more egregious -it seems the Tradition too deeply lacks soul and a moral compass to merit much singling out for its nobility.
Meanwhile, there are -and yes, perhaps fewer as a percentage population- beacons of good independent moral thought and action elsewhere too.
Was it really so different in times past?
It seems to me that perhaps there was no Great Generation, but rare Great Individuals scattered across the Earth.
was that Zelensky in the thumbnail though?
I'm grateful to them too, but I'm not so sure that I'd call them "the greatest." Greater than any that have come since, for sure. Great for having weathered the great depression, then come out victorious in WWll, absolutely. But let's not forget that this generation failed to finish the race, took their hands off the plow, and in their slackness and complacency following WWll, failed in raising their children well, the baby boomers, who ushered in the downfall of western society, starting in the 60s. I still give them a lot of credit overall, but this blight on their record is massive.
My father was a 19-year-old Marine in the First Marine Division unloading supplies at the beach, when he witnessed the Kamikazes attacking the US naval ships offshore. His Sgt. yelled at him and his buddies to stop gawking and get back to work.
Look up at the blood bath of the Sugar Loaf at Okinawa. A small hump of a hill, only a 100 yards wide, that cost the Marines dearly trying over and over to take it. Adjacent hills enfladed the Marines. US naval guns and artillery couldn't put a dent in them.
This is why the Nuclear bombs were necessary to end the war. The Japanese WANTED the US to invade their islands. They WANTED the opportunity to fight face to face. The Japanese leaders were willing to sacrifice every single Japanese man, woman, and child to fight a Götterdämmerung battle. If the Marines and Army troops where becoming callous and beastly at Okinawa, imagine the trauma they would suffer the rest of their lives shooting down old men, women and children charging them with bamboo spears and IED bombs. Okinawa really chilled the blood and spines of the US commanders imaging how many time worse it would be to invade Japan.
The a-Bombs ironically saved more Japanese lives than lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If the war dragged on through 1946-47, millions of Japanese would have starved to death or die from disease, as well as from combat. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Allied POW's would have perished, along the local natives in the territories the Japanese still held in China, Borneo, Hong Kong, Burma, Java, Singapore, and other islands.
The Russians also attacked from the North at the same time, ancestral enemies, the Japanese did not want to be taken over by Russia. The Russian timetable was something like 30 days after the defeat of Germany, they agreed to attack Japan. Right on the button as it turned out they invaded through Manchuria with lots of tanks and troops. A surprise attack it seems.
@@garywheeler7039 The A-bombs were a not-so-subtle message to stalin as well. Bruh, we have the power, we have the might, AND the willingness to use it.
We were going to use the bomb no matter what anyway and I do believe that Japan was always going to be the target once we had an operational device.
Hungry Haitians eat dogs and cats
Wow, this is the first time I have heard any historian mentioning the Army in any of the pacific battles other than in short passing. Most people think only the Marines were there?
One of my biggest problems with the Japanese thinking was they knew they had lost the war yet they thought they could work out a face-saving peace treaty. Instead, they wasted all those young men who were needed in the rebuilding of Japan. Stupid leadership to the max!!
There were considerably more US Army personnel than Marines in the Pacific theater. Still, it took the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen to win the day!
WHAT Are you serious? The US Army was the main ground and airpower fighting force in the Pacific theater during WW2. U.S. involvement in WWII grew to be about 16,000,000 military personnel by the war's end. Approximately 11,200,000 in the Army, and only 660,000 in the Marine Corps. The US Army did the vast majority of land fighting and had the greatest numbers of victories in the Pacific with 22 divisions. The Marines only had six divisions in the Pacific and played a very limited role. .
In the African and European theaters, the Marines had only 6,000 men.
I can not believe that you don't know this very common fact. I never heard anyone not knowing this.
@@mochatech121 nice copy and paste from Wikipedia lol... Marines were the first to fight then the army came in to relieve them throughout the battles .
The Japanese thought that if they made Okinawa costly enough to the Americans, they would be willing to end the war with a treaty as opposed to physically invading the main Japanese islands. Based on casualties from Okinawa, it was estimates that taking the main islands would have dragged out the war for another few years at the cost of 1 million American lives, and up to 100 million Japanese lives, many of them civilians. This estimate greatly influenced our decision to use the atomic bombs. I spent 20 years in the USMC (1986-2006) as an Infantry officer., with 3 combat tours including 2 in Iraq. We never had to go through the hell on earth that our WW2 veterans did. God bless them!
@@low-keyrighteous9575 LOL! Sorry that I "pasted" actual citational facts instead of substantiations and asserted fallacies.
After the battle of Okinawa, the casualty estimates for Operation Coronet (the 1st phase of 'Downfall', the invasion of Kyushu) were adjusted to expect nearly 300K Allied troops and almost 1 million Japanese killed or wounded . Honshu would be worse. Small wonder President Truman opted for nukes.
Its so easy for a "normal" Man to become a Monster.
Under the right( wrong) circumstances, anyone can cross to the "Dark Side". And War is One of those Circumstances.
My late father was wounded on Iwo Jima, but not bad enough to go home. He was in the Army Air Corp and was part of the last battle as the Japanese attacked the airbase. He survived to come home and years later, gave me my life. God bless those Marines who had survived Iwo Jima , only to have to go to Okinawa. One can only imagine how terrible the battle to take Japan would have been..
My father was on the invasion planning team. They expected millions of civilians to commit suicide, just like on Iwo and Okinawa. They saved millions by dropping the bomb.
@@MadMaximum-l3j God bless your Dad. RIP
It's always a good day when Dark Docs (along the other channels). Uploads a new video. Not to disrespect the suffering of the civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Operation Downfall would have been far worse.
If you've never experienced the rain and jungle on Okinawa, it's hard to understand the battle and Eugene Sledge's book. Suicide cliffs are by far the most disconcerting place I have ever been.
After Okinawa, it was insane to think we might be able to conquer mainland Japan.
The A-Bombs were bad but Japan is in a vastly better condition now than if they had fought to the last man, woman and child.
I had an uncle who fought on Iwo Jima, and he told us back in the very early '70's that the Marines he fought with would periodically have to be pulled from the fight because "they started liking to kill". Those are true stories.
Holy shit
My grandfather was removed from front line duty after the battle for sugarloaf Hill. Due to combat fatigue. I still have his bayonet with "Okinawa" carved into the handle.
The United States Marines and Navy Corpsmen that fought in the Pacific are the greatest men that ever walked the face of this earth.
Hardly... But still great respect for all the war veterans.
On Okinawa There were 103,000 US Army personnel, 80,000 Marines and 18,000 Navy Personnel.
Do not sell out this great country to a man who doesnt understand the pivotal role and ultimate sacrifice of the fallen soldier.
"this great country" was bought for pennies when the "federal reserve" was established and given control of the US economy...
Amen. Trump doesn't have a clue, or care about any of that.
@@williampotter3369 it's not that big of a deal. it's about 10 dollars for every person in the US. No doubt that stuff is being used or sold or cannibalized, and whoever that equipment is being used against, Americans don't care. I know I don't.
Billions are nothing compared to the total of our wars there started by GW Bush, cost of which is over 5 trillion. The costs of 9/11 are between 40 and 100 billion by comparison., maybe around 8000>10,000 dollars per American... Also allowed to happen under GW Bush.
@@danstrayer111 George Bush isn't running for president.
You mean the guy that is constantly checking his watch when the caskets go by?
My Father was in the USMC and fought in Okinawa.He enlisted at 17,with the help of my grandfather.He rarely spoke of the War.He would say"We just did what we had to do."He brought back pictures of him and his fellow Marines taking prisoners,coming out of underground tunnels.These men are true Heroes.Lets Never forget there Bravery!
A little know fact of the battle of Okinawa was when Shuri Castle was taken, they couldn't find a US flag to raise so General Buckner pulled his grandfather's Confederate battle flag out and raised it. "A rebel yell rang out over the battlefield and scared the hell out of the Japs" EB Sledge.
Gen. Buckner was actually the son (Simon B. Buckner, Jr.) of Confederate Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner. The old general, who had been in West Point with U.S. Grant and other famous generals of both sides, was 63 yrs old, when his son and namesake was born. Buckner was left to surrender to Grant at Ft. Pillow, after Gen's Floyd and Pillow fled. Buckner was traded after 5 mos captivity and resumed the fight until the end of the war. He attended Grant's funeral.
@@prentissmandrews2948 thank you for the correction. I've seen the flag in a museum and for some reason it stuck in my head that it was his grandfathers.
That was controversial during that time most Marines from the north and west were complaining about it so they had to remove it
My dad served on the battleship, Uss Colorado. His ship took kamikaze hits. He made the statement once while telling of some of the days on board during those days of the battle "The flies were so full of dead meat from the bodies they would run into the ship and fall into the ocean."
My dad served in the Pacific in WWII and I have his captured Japanese rifle that still has the emperors crissanthom and seals in my office. It's absolutely priceless to me..Like he was.. Miss him so much..
*Chrysanthemum
You should post a photo of that beauty on your social media accounts so we can all see it!
I bet it’s worth a few bucks to the right collector.
I have one the same, purchased from a dealer in Rockhampton Queensland. He got a lot of captured guns from the deceased estates of Australian veterans. Mine is fully intact with the words H H HALLIHAN MILNE BAY scratched into the butt with what appears to be a bullet tip. I have researched our A W M but no Australian by that name served in New Guinea. Several emails to various U S unit museums and memorial sites to no avail. This was by far not the best specimen the dealer had, but the cartouche itself is worth it for me, just wish I could find some history of this bloke. Dont know how to put a photo in reply section but will put one up on my tiny channel.
My Nephew has the Samurai sword my Father brought back from Okinawa.
My dad saw action in Europe and was shipped back to the states. He was told not to get comfortable as he would be getting shipped to the Pacific . Upon his arrival in the US, he was told of the two H- bomb attacks on Japan. He knew the war was over at that point. Many young men gave their lives in WW2. My dad never talked about the war until he was older. He even did an interview with my daughter for a class paper. She still has that paper.
Those weren't H-bombs. They were simply Atomic Bombs. H-bombs are much more powerful.
The War in the Pacific was a no holds bared fight to the end death match. The rules were chosen by the Japanese and they reaped the rewards. I don't fault any American soldier for their actions.
True, though I don't necessarily fault the Japanese either. You've really gotta believe in what you're doing to fight as hard and as dirty as they did.
@@Aqueox It's a tradition to die for the Emperor. And it's a American tradition to try not to sacrifice soldiers in combat. So that is why Truman dropped the bomb. Truman and Kennedy were the last Presidents to be in combat. Harry was a artillery officer in WWI. He didn't want to see dead American kids coming home from war and when he had the ability to stop it he did the right thing. Saved my Dad and Uncle's life.
@@milt6208 You're not counting Eisenhower?
always good to hear about Eugene Sledge.
I served on Okinawa from June of '89 to June of '91. Being from Colorado I bad never experienced humidity before and thought as I got off of the rear of our 747, "Wow! Those engines sure are hot from such a long flight!?"😆 Tragically I realize that after a 5 minute walk across the tarmac to the terminal and drenched in sweat that it wasn't plane engines!
For everyone who has an ancestor who fought on Okinawa, take the time to document what you can so their sacrifices will not be forgotten by future generations. I documented what my Father told me and read several books about Okinawa to document the movements of his regiment. It was one of the best things I ever did!!! Amazon has several good books.
I recommend starting with the ones written by Appleman and Leckie.
The land forces on Okinawa consisted of four Army divisions and three Marine divisions. They all took heavy losses.
E.B. (Sledgehammer) Sledge wrote "With The Old Breed" which is about Pelilieu and Okinawa. It is the very best book about men in combat that I have read. The way the Marines lived with & treated each other was still the same during my time in Nam.
I was stationed on Okinawa during 1964 and there were still signs of the war. That year Shuri Castle was torn down.
But it was rebuilt. It suffered a fire in 2019 and is currently under restoration efforts.
An uncle of mine was on an aircraft carrier that was struck by a kamikaze. After the fires were out they found the Japanese pilot and relieved him of his afterlife money. Those people were crazy.
Bizarre.!!!
I can just imagine some salt-eyed bastard in utilities rifling through the pilot's pockets, saying "Lol have fun being poor in hell, nerd"
Thats a difference in belief and culture.
If your soldiers sacrifice their lives then you call them heroes.
My papaw was an original crew member on the Intrepid. What that ship went through would make a good tv series. He died in 1979 when I was only 10. I do know from my Granny that he was very close to where one of the kamikaze strikes occurred.
MY LATE FATHER-IN-LAW FOUGHT THERE AS A FLAMETHROWER.OUT OF 60 MEN IN HIS OUTFIT,ONLY 5 WALKED OFF THE ISLAND. I HAVE HIS PICTURES HE TOOK ON THE BATTLE AND HIS TIME IN CHINA AFTER THE WAR.HE LOVED THE FIRST MARINE DIVISION.HE PASSED IN 82. MAY THEY ALL REST IN HEAVEN BECAUSE THEY WHEN THROUGH HELL DURING THE WAR.
Why are you yelling?
@@davidb8373 I OLD AND BECAUSE I CAN
@@davidb8373 He yells to deafen himself, so he doesn't hear the screams of burning men
Most excellent, concise documentary format. I had an uncle, Alva Pierce, who captained the Apache signal ship for MacArthur in Pacific operations. Massive operations to beat the Japanese. The Japanese fought hard, but against a stirred giant.
Just imagine the uproar if we hadn’t dropped the atomic bombs, lost hundreds of thousands in the invasion of Japan, only to have to admit later that yes, we had a war-winning secret weapon in our back pocket all along. How would that have gone over with the families of every one of our casualties from invading Japan?
Absolutely terrible I can’t even imagine what those men went through
My grandfather never really got over this battle and hated the Japanese till the he died.
It's amazing to think that this battle left such a strong impression on the Marine Corps, that to this day they haven't left the island.
As a child I never heard my father his three brothers and may cousins and friends that served in WW2 ever speak about the war. As a vet I never spoke of my time in the service 68 to 71. People i worked with for over 30 years never knew i served. I am happy now that the public is interested in hearing about their sacrifice and personal stories.
This video really highlights both why the nuke was necessary and why its use caused Japan to surrender. The goal was to cause so many US casualties that they would be forced to negotiate. Japan was organizing its women and children to charge US troops with spears should the home islands be invaded. The use of one plane to devastate entire cities showed them how futile it would be
Been listening to Sledge's book "the old breed" here on yt. Amazing story
My dad was a Seabee in the war and took lots of photos of the carnage of japanese soldiers. I still look at them from time to time to remind myself how horrible war is and how we must try to avoid it at all cost.
Currently stationed on Okinawa. You can actually visit the location where Gen Buckner was killed (it's marked on Google Maps).
The bit about the rain is spot-on. Okinawa is no joke when it rains, it's a torrential downpour. I think about the guys who had to fight during those conditions and find it insane they just dealt with it.
Thank you for your service!
My dad and 2 of his high school friends were on different ships off Okinawa. His 2 friends were step-brothers. My dads ship, the USS Pensacola was hit by a shore battery, dozens were injured/killed. 1 friend was killed when the USS Aaron Ward was attacked by 20+ kamikaze planes. I knew the surviving friend growing up , but didnt know these things till after he and my dad had passed. That gave me a fresh perspective on my dad and that generation. He would answer questions if asked, but didnt volunteer much. I guess we know why. If i knew then what i know know i might have asked more, but i was way too young to understand.
My grandfather wouldnt speak of the atrocities (his words) he saw on both sides. He fought on Okinawa and I loved the man I knew growing up. Back in my youth he built every house he lived in (3), he was so incredibly talented. He once told me after begging him to share a story with me, he said I would grandson, but the pains in my heart would hurt to much knowing that what I told you would be in your soul forever and it would just be to much for him to carry. It was then I understood and I never asked again.
Kamikaze is only for flying planes into things. The infantry did banzai charges.
My uncle Joe mentioned the war only once. He was watching tv when some knucklehead said "that the bombs shouldn't have been used" This quite elderly man exploded like a A-bomb(pun intended). He then looked me in the eyes and told me that "after Okinawa I knew that there was no way in hell id ever survive invading the home islands!
When those bombs were dropped it was like a miracle from out of nowhere " then he said something that i didn't understand at the time but today i do "Those bombs killed thousands but they saved millions"!!!
Thank you for covering Eugene Sledge's writings and recollections of the bloody fighting in which the USMC were engaged, against the Japanese forces. (I recall that Pellilu was the worst Island for complete barbarism.) Having personally sought a number of history programs, to cover this particular campaign, with each ignoring me. I truly believe that we are grown up sufficiently to face the true horrors of total war, and the dreadful and deep toll it wears on combatants.
Cheers. 🤔🤔🤔🤔
My father in law, Robert Berry was a machinist mate aboard the USS John Bole & he was at Okinawa. He never said much about his experiences just that he hated the kamikaze's. When he arrived the island was all but secure but the air raids were still going on.
Thank you Dark Docs for all the work you put in making your videos unbiased, not like the hard work that those who prefer hatred and division (politicians & religion)
Read Sledge’s book, “With the old Breed”. By the time the marines landed the Japanese had no airforce, no Navy. They killed all the Japanese by going end to end twice. Correct me if I’m wrong, as I remember the total enemy killed was 135,000. With 10,000 marines lost. There is no way that would happen now. Our nation is not unified enough to do it. Paradoxically, the bombs saved millions of lives. The Japanese were prepared to defend to the last person on the main islands. It is likely that our military would have been forced to kill them all.
No one will ever convince me that the atomic bomb was not necessary. My father was a 21 year old Marine in 1945 having served on Kwajalein, Saipan and Tinian. He was sent to the states in May 1945 to get his weight back (he had lost 30 lbs and had malaria) so he would be ready for the proposed invasion of Honshu in November 1945. Several years ago I met a couple of Japanese exchange students at a barbecue on August 6th. They asked if Americans celebrated that day. I told them I did.
It was a political decision and not a military one.
The primary aim was to demonstrate the power of the USA to the USSR. By then the Japanese had already asked for peace negotiations. Even leading American military officials were against the drops. Among others, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Nimitz and so on.
The tale of the tens of thousands of soldiers saved by the atomic bombings was only published when the American public was shocked by the grisly images.
This fairy tale is actually only believed in the USA, otherwise one would have to admit to terrible war crimes.